42 ERRONEOUS DOCTRINES OP WRITERS. 



proving soils from books, and whose subsequent plans and practices 

 have grown out of those opinions. If poor natural soils cannot be 

 durably or profitably improved by putrescent manures, this truth 

 should not only be known, but be kept constantly in view, by 

 every farmer who can hope to improve with success. Yet it is a 

 remarkable fact, that the difference in the capacities of soils for 

 receiving improvement has not attracted the attention of scientific 

 farmers ; and the doctrine has no direct and positive support from 

 the author of any treatise on agriculture, European or American, 

 that I have been able to consult. On the contrary, it seems to be 

 considered by all of them, that to collect and apply as much 

 vegetable and animal manure as possible, is sufficient to insure 

 profit to every farmer, and fertility to every soil. They do not tell 

 us that numerous exceptions to that rule will be found, and that 

 many soils of apparently good texture, if not incapable of being 

 enriched from the barn-yard, would at least cause more loss than 

 clear profit, by being improved from that source. 



When it is assumed that the silence of every distinguished author 

 as to certain soils being incapable of being profitably enriched, 

 amounts to ignorance of the fact, or a tacit denial of its truth it 

 may be objected that the exception was not omitted from either of 

 these causes, but because it was established and undoubted. This 

 is barely possible ; but even if such were the case, their silence has 

 had all the ill consequences that could have.grown out of a positive 

 denial of any exceptions to the propriety of manuring poor soils. 

 Every zealous young farmer, who draws most of his knowledge and 

 opinions from books, adopts precisely the same idea of their di- 

 rections and if he owns barren soils he probably throws away his 

 labour and manure for their improvement, for years, before experience 

 compels him to abandon his hopes, and acknowledge that his guides 

 have led him only to failure and loss. Such farmers as I allude 

 to, by their enthusiasm and spirit of enterprise, are capable of 

 rendering the most important benefits to agriculture. Whatever 

 may be their impelling motives, the public derives nearly all the 

 benefit of their successful plans ; and their far more" numerous mis- 

 directed labours, and consequent disappointments, are productive of 

 national, etill more than individual loss. The occurrence of only 

 a few such mistakes, made by reading farmers, will serve to acquit 

 me of combating a shadow and there are few of us who cannot 

 recollect some such examples. 



But if the foregoing objection has any weight in justifying Euro- 

 pean authors in not naming this exception, it can have none for 

 those of our own country. If it be admitted that soils naturally 

 poor are incapable of being enriched with profit, that admission 

 must cover three-fourths of all the high land kuthe tide-water dis- 

 trict. Surely no one will contend that so sweeping an exception 



