108 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



mire, and all other fertilizers, except plaster of Paris and clover ; conservative 

 and valuable as these are, experience will finally reveal it as a great error to 

 those who put their faith in these alone to sustain and improve their estates- 

 Furthermore it may be added that the course and objects to v;hich I would in- 

 vite their attention, and which JMature seems to indicate — that of increasing their 

 meadows, improving their pastures, raising racre stock that may go on tlie hoof to 

 market, and making more cheese, butler, and wool ; giving to their capital and 

 labor a more extended application in these directions — will have but imperfectly 

 accomplished its legitimate and natural end, if it do not vastly increase their scores 

 of artificial manure. The New-England reader, who gathers up the droppings 

 of every beast of the field, and would save that of the birds of the air if he could, 

 as if it were gold-dust — -he who buys his corn from the South, and yet makes the 

 hog that eats it pay for it with his oiTal, will scarcely believe that some farm- 

 ers in Virginia Avho number of domestic animals more than a hundred, save 

 scarcely manure enough for their kitchen gardens ! Will he believe that vessels 

 have loaded lately with ashes in Fredericksburg, to be taken to fertilize the soil 

 of wide-awake, sharp-witted little Delaware? But there, you tell us, they freely 

 patronize and read The Farmeks' Library! In conclusion, Mr. Editor, allov/ 

 me to subjoin, in the way of advice for the good people of Virginia — toward whom 

 my heart has always had a scarcely less than hlial yearning — a few homely 

 lines : 



" Cultivate litile, but cultivate well, 

 Your crops alternate, iigood produce you 'd sell ; 

 Your soil manure often — tlie return it yields 

 Will tenfold repay what you spend on your fields. 

 Sow f.rKP8, too, at times, if you wish to make sitre 

 Of having a plentiful stock of manure. 

 Without grass you've no cattle — without cattle, 't is plain, 

 You '11 have no manure and without that no grain." 



MONTGOMERY COUNTY (MARYLAND) FARMING. 



As beifig quite apropos to some of the topics treated in the preceding comrau-' 

 nication, particularly the use of oxen and of lime, we copy from the Aineri' 

 can Farmer, with particular pleasure, the following most edifying Letter, from 

 one whom, in a sense of justice to the man, as well as of policy toward the agri- 

 cultural interest, we have repeatedly characterized as a worthy fugleman in the 

 inarch of improvement, by which his immediate neighborhood, (thanks to him- 

 self and and the friends who compose it,) has for years been gaining more and 

 more of enviable distinction. And how much more truly honorable in the eyes . 

 of all humane and well-judging men are the trophies thus won by the Plow, 

 and by rnmd applied to peaceful Industry, than such as are stained with Christian 

 blood in wars of invasion and conquest ! 



Every sentence, every line, of this letter has its moral and its value. Who in- 

 deed shall measure the value of the examples of men Avho thus demonstrate, in. 

 the face and eyes of the most incredulous and indolent, how small and exhausted 

 farms, with means proportionably limited, may, by indomitable perseverance and 

 skillful treatment, be brought ultimately to a high degree of fertility — and thus 

 how Agriculture, as compared with other more attracting and fashionable pur- 

 suits, may be made to yield a comfortable living and a living profit on the capital 

 and labor, and intellect employed ! Theirs is a lesson for the millions — for it 

 shows v/hy and how men in ordinary if not in indigent circumstances, need 

 not despair — need not abandon their little farms, however reduced, to go, in 

 search of easier lives and better fortunes, either into the dangerous and corrupt 

 atmosphere of large towns or into a condition of vet more corrupting and miser- 



