FIVE GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. 39 



provided we can manage to live on that income. If we live on 

 still less, we are actually growing richer (by laying tip a part of 

 our two per cent.), notwithstanding the most clearly-proved regular 

 loss on our farming. 



Our condition has been so gradually growing worse, that we are 

 either not aware of the extent of the evil, or are in a great measure 

 reconciled by custom to profitless labour. No hope for a better 

 state of things can be entertained, until we shake off this apathy 

 this excess of contentment, which makes no effort to avoid existing 

 evils. I have endeavoured to expose what is worst in our situation 

 as farmers; if it should have the effect of arousing any of my 

 countrymen to a sense of the absolute necessity of some improve- 

 ment, to avoid ultimate ruin, I hope also to point out to some of 

 their number, if not to all, that the means for certain and highly 

 profitable improvements are completely within their reach. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE DIFFERENT CAPACITIES OF SOILS FOR RECEIVING 

 IMPROVEMENT. 



As far as the nature of the subjects permitted, the foregoing 

 chapters have been merely explanatory and descriptive. The same 

 subjects will be resumed and more fully treated in the course of 

 the following general argument, the premises of which are the facts 

 and circumstances that have been detailed. The object of this 

 essay will now be entered upon ; and what is desired to be proved 

 will be stated in a series of propositions, which will now be pre- 

 sented at one view, and afterwards separately discussed in their 

 proper order. 



Proposition 1. Soils naturally poor, and rich soils reduced to 

 poverty by cultivation, are essentially different in their powers of 

 retaining putrescent (or alimentary) manures; and, under like 

 circumstances, the fitness of any soil to be enriched by these ma- 

 nures is in proportion to the degree of its natural fertility. 



2d. The natural sterility of , the soils of lower Virginia is caused 

 by such soils being destitute of calcareous earth, and their being 

 injured by the presence and effects of vegetable acid. ^_ 



3d. The fertilizing effects of calcareous earth are chiefly pro- 

 duced by its power of neutralizing acids, and of combining putres- 



