MONTGOMERY COUNTY (maRYLAND) FARMING. 109 



able dependence on the spoils and schemes of party. Mr. Stabler and his neigh- 

 bors show, on the contrary, how — by inquiry, by the exercise of thought, com- 

 bined with a hopeful temper and a resolute spirit to improve the gifts of a kind 

 Providence — a barren may be converted into a rich soil, and the very desert be 

 made to "blossom as the rose." Yes, truly inappreciable is the lesson of those 

 who thus prove for the honor of Agriculture that it is essentially an intellectual 

 calling, which and when so pursued, will cause the poorest soil to repay honest- 

 ly the small advances which the rich may vouchsafe to loan on the faiih of its 

 ulterior capabilities — and tinally how it may yield to those who thus cherish it, 

 the most respectable and independent sort of support that an honest man caa 

 covet or enjoy. 



Mr. Stabler's was not the rare case of a farmer amply provided with the wag- 

 ons, implements, and machinery ; horses, mules and cattle — appendages of large 

 establishments — with abundant capital to purchase lime, ashes, and guano ; tak- 

 ing up a lot in one corner of a large farm and concentrating upon it the means of 

 bringing it round from great poverty to great productiveness as quickly as, in the 

 nature of tilings, poor land can be made rich, by strong judgment, the power of 

 capital, and the use of all the fertilizers, animal and mineral ; else, as he tells us, the 

 great results achieved by him, in twenty or thirty years, out of his small begin- 

 nings, might have been more profitably brought about in less than a fourth of 

 the time. It took him, as we see, seven years to realize the first visible meliora- 

 tion produced by lime — whereas if he could have had the offal of a large stock, 

 together with ashes and bone-bust and guano at pleasure, a yet greater increase 

 of crops might have been reaped in a single year or two, at most. But how few 

 of those whose hopes and expectations and dependence rest entirely on the 

 resuscitation of their soil, have it in their power to seize precisely the most favor- 

 able times and seasons for the various operations necessary in the process of an 

 experiment, and, by the application, of redundant force, get all the manures 

 spread, and all the work done, exactly at the right time ? Thus thousands of 

 farmers may be slow, or even fail in the best designs at improvement, without 

 being delinquent, or obnoxious to the charge of want either of judgment or in- 

 dustry. In the Eastern States — under a wiser policy which encourages a Free 

 Trade in money, and Avhere every County has its moneyed institutions owned in 

 a great measure by, and identified with the landed and manufacturing and me- 

 chanical interests — any respectable and discreet farmer or mechanic can borrow 

 the small sums necessary to give activity to his personal acquirements, industry 

 and enterprising disposition ; and here is, in fact, one great root of their growth 

 and prosperity— but is it so with farmers and mechanics in Maryland, Virginia 

 and the Southern States generally ? On the contrary, how humiliating, and after 

 all how precarious and uncertain, the expedients and solicitations to which they 

 must have recourse to borrow the smallest suras for a time within which any 

 course of industry, however unremitting and skillful, will enable them to refund 

 it ! Let them, the mass of small farmers, who inherit small, and lor the most part 

 encumbered estates, answer the question. 



On the other hand, the demonstration of Col. Capron, as detailed in the 

 ** Farmer " and other journals, is one of quite a ditTerent character, showing how, 

 by a judicious, energetic usj of ample means and appliances of every sort 

 in hand, the most unpromising and exhausted old field may, in the shortest possi- 

 ble time, be brought round to a stale of extraordinary productiveness — repaying 

 outlay, and leaving it in such condition that nothing farther is needed but houL'St 



