162 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



to redeem or renew the old family plate. On the industrious man Despair may 

 look in, but he dare not enter, as Poor Richard says. But, Sir, lest you should 

 suppose that high-bred colt is off with me, sure enough, let us return to our 

 subject. 



What, in this estate, must forcibly strike a Lowlander on riding over it, is that 

 you nowhere see a field of level land ! — no plains covering the tops of hills— no 

 outspreading intervales at their feet. All is precipitous or rolling ; and yet no- 

 where a sign of a wash or gully — no broken surface, nor anywhere a drop of 

 stagnant water, not even in the bottom of the " Devil's punch-bowls" or " sinks," 

 so numerous as to have given to this region the name of the " Sink Country." 

 These sinks sometimes comprise acres. of ground, descending in regular form, to 

 the depth, it may be, of fifty or a hundred feet to the botton), which is not larger 

 in proportion than the bottom of a mill-hopper, and yet the water, after the 

 heaviest rain, runs through as through a seive, never remaining long enough to 

 drown a spear of the grass ; on the contrary, the grass which grows there is, if 

 anything, greener and more luxuriant than elsewhere. A view of these numer- 

 ous sinks or caverns — characteristic of limestone districts in this State — and 

 other features of the country, lead one to imagine that the whole district was in a 

 liquid, boiling condition, and by some great spasm or paralysis of Nature, was 

 suddenly cooled and left in statu quo. Nothing but the sight of it can prevent 

 you from deriding my hypothesis as the wayward stretch of a crude imagination. 

 Well ! 7i' importe. One thing, however, cannot be denied, in view of these 

 mountain farms, that they indicate by. their great healthiness for man and beast, 

 and their apparent uniformity of productiveness, the soundness of the great prin- 

 ciples of thorough draining, which constitutes the leading feature of the sys- 

 tems now in progress for agricultural improvement in Europe. Here, where not 

 a drop of water lies anywhere on the surface for a moment after it falls, the foot, 

 the sides, and the tops of hills, over hundreds of acres, whether cleared or in 

 wood — all parts seem alike fertile and verdant. At the top no less than the base 

 does the timothy flourish until eaten out by the yet more nutritious and fattening 

 blue-grass, which takes final possession ; and such seems to be the nature of all 

 this region — with this distinction, that where the oak is the principal growth, 

 there the land is more gravelly, throws up an undergrowth of wood, and is bet- 

 ter adapted to grain, while the prevalence of the maple, and buckeye, and wal- 

 nut, shows more fitness for grass, and, like the blue-grass lands in Kentucky, is 

 clear of undergrowth ; so that 1 would not, with a fair chance for the brush, hesi- 

 tate to drive even my " Marylander " colt through it at the top of his speed in a fox- 

 chase. In equal luxuriance, 'tis true, you see the timothy covering the much 

 less expanded but equally precipitous hills at Hayfields and other farms on the 

 Gunpowder, in Maryland ; but their fertility has been maintained by heavy doses 

 of lime and manure, rendered indispensable by more frequently alternating grain 

 crops, and by selling the grass off the land. Here it lias been, so far, kept up, 

 and promises to be continued, if not augmented, by the happy effects of a saga- 

 cious and self-supporting system of grazing, so well conducted that nothing is 

 carried off, but everything restored to the land. Pouring in the grain as he 

 takes away the meal, the grazier's hopper is always full. Hoav different with 

 the grass farmer, who sells his hay in the cities ! He should remember that he 

 can't eat his cake and have it too. Small leaks sink great ships, as Poor Rich- 

 ard says. In fact, the great beauty and conservative operation of the grazing 

 over the tillage system, which it behooves the farmers all along the line of our 

 travel, to remember, consists in the fact that the former pays on the spot what it 

 borrows from his estate, and that it requires, comparatively, but a small quan- 

 tity and cost of labor in proportion to the money results. 



But I must not detain the reader, by ill-digested remarks of my own, from the 

 following. He will please remember that this exposition of my kind host. Mr. 

 Beirne, does not purport to be anything like a regular dissertation on this beau- 

 tiful branch of agricultural industry, for which I had no right to ask, but is to 

 be considered merely as a transcript of his answers to categorical and desultory 

 questions propounded by me casually in the course of our rides over his farm,, 

 which questions, without being here repeated, may be understood from the nature 

 of his answers. A greater measure of personal experience, and some time for delib- 

 eration, would have enabled me to frame my inquiries with more pertinence, and 



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