310 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



as heavier capitalists than llie North, are content with lesser profits ; (no people 

 reqvire greater returns from capital invested ;) and he also errs, in his estimate 

 of their relative capital, in his losing sight of that great element of capital ex* 

 isting at the Worth, the personal exertions of the inliabitanis. 



But in addition to this of per capita capital, whicii Mr. Randall applies 

 to the entire North, there are other and most numerous difficulties under which 

 he considers the Prairie regions to labor, and I shall proceed to investigate their 

 validity, applying at the same time the test of personal experience. 



The first of these which occur to me, are his mistaken notions of our soil and 

 herbage, peculiar as they are to the prairies. From some unknown property of 

 the former, nearly all of the weeds and plants of this region possess an acridity 

 and pungency which I believe is elsewhere unknown, and although it may be 

 true that some of these plants are preferred and soon exterminated by sheep, yet 

 it must not be inferred that they like and thrive upon no other. The wild pea 

 and wild bean, (to which alone I understand Mr. Wight's remarks to apply,) are 

 found in every newly settled part of our Union, and in all cases meet the same 

 fate as here. Of the wild grasses, we have, it is true, more than one variety ; 

 but there is one which vastly predominates over all the others, and is changed 

 materially in its appearance by the soil from which it accidentally springs. Thus, 

 upon the peaks of the dry and sandy rolling prairies, it is short, fine in its leaf, 

 and sparse in its stools, while, upon the fat valleys, bordering the streams, it be- 

 comes tall, rank and comparatively compact. Of this grass, while young and 

 tender, sheep and other stock are excessively fond, passing, untasted, the choicest 

 of timothy and clover to seek it. To keep a supply of this grass young and ten- 

 der, all provident farmers and wool-growers arrange that system of " late burns," 

 which the wording upon page 78 indicates Mr. Kandall not to understand. For 

 although each of our Western States prohibits the firing of the prairies, in the 

 winter, as dangerous, yet no one here considers it nearly so hazardous to fire the 

 dead grass, intermixed with the green growth of the present year, as is that 

 practice, so common among farmers, the firing of stubble. Wherefore you will 

 perceive it is no new ''suggestion," either of Mr. Flower, or of Mr. Wight, of 

 doubtful expediency. I burn two thousand acres, at least, in this way, every 

 year ; and it is by means of this practice, in connection with continuous depastur- 

 ing, that I seek to accomplish that great desideratum with us, which Mr. Ran- 

 dall evidently considers almost fatal to the claims of the prairies as pasture 

 grounds ; — I mean the extirpation of the wild grasses. So far from this being an 

 objection, herein lies one of the profits of Sheep Husbandry, on these plains, for, 

 not only are the lands enriched by the droppings of the stock, but so completely 

 are the long roots exhausted and destroyed by continuous burning and depastur- 

 ing, that that plowing which, on page 79, is made to require from four to six 

 yoke of oxen, is easily done by one. Rut the advantage stops not here, for Mr. 

 R. is decidedly in error in his note to the same page,* where he says that no 

 practical farmer Avill credit the assertion that the seeds of the cultivated grasses 

 will "catch " when sown " on the surface of the prairie sod," as may be satis- 

 factorily demonstrated by an inspection of the extensive tame pastures, created 

 in this manner, belonging to that most excellent practical farmer and grazier, 

 Mr. Holderman, near this village. His pastures now cover fifteen hundred acres, 

 nearly all under a single fence. The truth of this matter is, that so soon as the 

 native grasses are destroyed, (which may be done, if properly followed up, in two 

 or three years, or, if not, may require twenty,) the seed of the timothy, blue- 

 grass or red-top being thickly sown, and afterAvard well harrowed or even well 

 trodden in by a large stock of sheep or cattle, will soon mat the surface with as 

 fine a crop of grass as our prairies will produce, and it is generally believed that, 

 put in in this mode, the pastures are more durable. 



Perhaps at this point 1 might be content to rest, satisfied in having corrected 

 an error so material to his calculations as seriously to affect if not to settle the 

 question of the advocated superiority of the South. But my hand being in, and 

 not desiring the appearance of shrinking from objections, rained down in a storm 



*It is worthy of passing remfirk that Mr. Randall should have been so readily willing to believe and pub- 

 lish VfLat he considers an objection to prairie pasturing, (that they soon are eiiten out,) while he slurs over 

 in a mere note another iniporlnnt advantage arising out of it, and casts gi-eat doubt and discredit on the 

 fact itself, to wit : That the seeds of tlie tame grasses, or some of them, will catch, and seed down the un- 

 broken soda of the prairie, if rightly applied. 

 (630) 



