OPPOSING DOCTRINE. 45 



the received opinion, among agricultural writers, that all soils may 

 be profitably improved by putrescent manures. An article in the 

 < American Farmer,' of October 14th, 1831, on ^ manuring large 

 farms," by the editor (Gr. B. Smith), contains the following ex- 

 pressions. "By proper exertions, every farm, in the United States 

 can be manured with less expense than the surplus profits arising 

 from the manure would come to. This we sincerely believe, and 

 we have arrived at this conclusion from long and attentive observa- 

 tion. We never yet saw a farm that we could not point to means 

 of manuring, and bring into a state of high and profitable cultiva- 

 tion at an expense altogether inconsiderable when contrasted with 

 the advantages to be derived from it." The remainder of the 

 article shows that putrescent manures are principally relied on to 

 produce these effects ; marsh and swamp mud are the only kinds 

 referred to that are not entirely putrescent in their action ; and mud 

 certainly cannot be used to manure every farm. Mr. Smith having 

 been long the conductor of a valuable agricultural journal, as a 

 matter of course, is extensively acquainted with the works and 

 opinions of the best writers on agriculture; and therefore, his 

 advancing the foregoing opinions, as certain and undoubted, is as 

 much a proof of the general concurrence therein of preceding 

 writers, as if the same had been given as a digest of their pre- 

 cepts.* 



Some persons will readily admit the great difference in the capa- 

 cities of soils for improvement, but consider a deficiency of clay 

 only* to cause the want of power to retain manures. The general 

 excess of sand in our poor lands might warrant this belief in a 

 superficial and limited observer. But though clay soils are more 

 rarely met with, they present, in proportion to their extent, full as 

 much poor land. The most barren and worthless soils in the 

 county of Prince George are also the stiffest.. A poor clay soil will 

 retain manure longer than a poor sandy soil but it will not the 

 less certainly lose, its acquired fertility at a somewhat later period. 

 When it is considered that a much greater quantity of manure is 

 required by day soils, it may well be doubted whether the tem- 



[* Though not then known to me, and probably to few if any others in 

 America, there was then in print the expression of the opinion which I 

 have announced and maintained above. This exception I subsequently met 

 with, and republished the article in the Farmer's Register (Vol. iv. p. 335.) 

 It was a communication from the excellent practical farmer, William Daw- 

 son, of Scotland, to the Farmer's Magazine, published in Edinburgh. In 

 this communication, the writer, and, so far as I know, he only, before 

 myself, asserts opinions which approach very nearly to the doctrine above 

 maintained, of the incapacity of naturally poor soils for being profitably 

 or durably improved by putrescent manures alone and also their newly 

 acquired fitness for being enriched after having been limed.] 



