GRAZING IN MONROE COUNTY, VA. 161 



settlement, and are so proclaimed to all mquiring strangers — and is there no true 

 and solid honor in that ? "Would you not covet for your son's brow such a chaplet 

 as that, in preference to one stained with human blood, or to a fool's cap ! Put 

 this question, Sir, plainly and plumply to the public, and inquire Avhether any 

 man of real discernment, having an honest and well-founded regard for his sons, 

 ought not to be ashamed to look them in the face if he withholds from them the 

 means of becoming instructed in the principles and the literature that belong to 

 their profession in life, and are necessary to invest it with all that is in it either 

 interesting or ornamental in the view of men of cultivated minds. As for your old 

 American Farmer, Mr. Editor, it contains, undeniably, a vast mass of facts and 

 results of experiments. It skimmed the cream from scattered vessels of long stand- 

 ing—cream that but for the receptacle thus provided would have been lost, much 

 of it, to the world — to that we may at any time turn for mere facts, but, except for 

 new and raw inquirers, these are comparatively not needed. We all know what 

 can be done with abundant means — with plenty of wagons and carts, and men and 

 horses — with good, thorough plowing and harrowing, and laying thick ashes, 

 and stable-manure, and suano, and lime, and plaster, and bone-dust, and pou- 

 drette — for money used Aviih judgment and energy will tell in Agriculture as in 

 Commerce and Manufactures. But now we want to know the hoiv and the 

 ■wherefore, so that, of such materials as ordinary farmers may command, no 

 waste may be committed by ignorance of their proper combination and of their 

 adaptation to the crops Ave have in view, but all be used with that true and ex- 

 act economy which is only to be obtained by knowledge of the principles involved 

 in every step we take — by a knowledge of what is inhering in the soil, and in 

 what it is deficient in reference to the crops we propose to cultivate ; and how 

 much of the several elements of fertility a given amount of each crop will draw 

 out of and convey off from the land. The same as to animals : the food best 

 adapted to the objects we have in view, and howand in what state their various 

 food may be most economically administered. This, Sir, I rejoice, for one, to 

 see, is the high and glorious destiny — the destiny of an intellectual organization 

 and operation for Agriculture — at which you are aiming. Its friends implore for 

 you the all-powerful cooperation of the general press. With its aid, such impe- 

 tus and direction may be given to public sentiment as that we may hope yet to 

 see the time when all" these things shall be taught in our schools, with the same 

 conviction of their utility, and the same practical results, that the Government, 

 representing and supported by the landed interest, now takes care to have taught 

 and diflused the principles involved in the science of war, and even the knowl- 

 edge of the foreign language in which those principles are best expressed. Ah, 

 iSir, can the landed interest which you advocate, and for which you have been 

 laboring for thirty years, but be brought to think .'^The Press only can stimulate 

 them to that ; that can beget with farmers the will to extort justice for them- 

 selves — and when there is a Avill there will soon be found a way ! 



GRAZING, AS CONDUCTED AT WALNUT GROVE, MONROE COUNTY, VA. 



Since closing my last dispatch I have had the pleasure to ride, agam and 

 again, on a fine, high-bred four-year-old, as playful as a kitten, over this exten- 

 sive domain. As we passed from field to field of new-mown hay or verdant pas- 

 ture, among herds of assorted cattle of all ages, some browsing in the open fields, 

 others chewing the cud in the grateful shade of trees that shoot up 40 or 50 feet 

 without a limb, I could not but imagine how the " Farmer of Kinderhook," 

 worthily distinguished for his success in some useful and popular departments of 

 Horticulture, must have been impressed with the great extent and unsubdued fer- 

 tility of a single estate bought and thus improved by the rare industry and enter- 

 prise of an individual coming from abroad, and wending his way from the tide- 

 waters of the Old Dominion, to carve out for himself an inmiense fortune herein 

 her western Avilderness I Wiiat an example of energy and thriftiness was that 

 of Col. Beirne for her thousand sons that arc whiling away their lives in listless- 

 ness and despair! as if our unbounded and yet infant comitry did not present a 

 thousand avenues of independence to the resolute and industrious ! Alas ! the 

 misfortune is, that those who have been reared in the remembrance and use of 

 the old silver tankard, can't bring themselves to drink out of a gourd ; but the 

 sooner they learn to grapple with their difliculties, the sooner will they be able 



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