PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1842. IX 



But though the circulation of this work will be most useful through the 

 great tide-water region, which is so generally supplied with underlying 

 beds of fossil shells, and so much of the soil of which especially needs 

 such manure, still the assertion may be ventured that there is no part of 

 the country where the views presented, if true, are not important to be 

 known ; and, if known, would not be highly useful to aid the improvement 

 of soils. It is to the general theory of the constitution of fertile and 

 barren soils, that the attention and severe scrutiny of both scientific and 

 practical agriculturists are invited ; and to the several minor points there 

 presented, which are either altogether new, or not established by autho- 

 rity such as the doctrine of acidity in soils of the incapacity of poor 

 and acid soils to be enriched and of the entire absence of carbonate of 

 lime in most of the soils of this country. 



April, 1835. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE 

 PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1842. 



IN the few years which have passed since the issue of the preceding 

 edition, it is believed that the use of marl and lime, in lower Virginia, has 

 been extended over thrice as much land as had been previously thus im- 

 proved ; and the previous clear income of the farmers thus fertilizing their 

 lands has probably been already thereby increased in amount by several 

 hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the intrinsic value' of the lands 

 raised by as many millions. These great augmentations of annual profits 

 and of the true value of landed capital, from this single source, if they 

 could be accurately estimated, would be seen to have produced an important 

 item of additional revenue to the treasury of the commonwealth. And 

 these additions of wealth to individuals and to the state, would be obvious 

 as well as real, but for the existence of other circumstances which have 

 operated to counteract or to disguise the proper results. The most im- 

 portant of such influences will be merely referred to here in the cursory 

 manner only that the occasion permits. 



In the first place besides the deservedly very low appreciation of all 

 lands in Virginia, founded on the smallness of their products, the market 

 prices were formerly still more reduced by the almost universal urgent de- 

 sire of proprietors to sell, that they might be enabled then to emigrate to 

 the new and rich lands of the west. The impossibility of selling, even at 

 the lowest valuation price, was the only thing which prevented the actual 

 flood of emigration being so much more swelled as to leave half our lands 

 unoccupied and waste. If purchasers had but presented themselves, fully 

 half the farms in Prince George county (and it is presumed of many other 

 counties) might have been bought up at a considerable deduction from the 

 lowest estimated value ; and all the sellers would have removed, with all 

 their capital, to the western wilderness. To the then actual and regular 

 flow of emigration from the now marling district, an effectual barrier has 

 been opposed by the introduction of that mode of improvement. All emi- 

 gration has ceased wherever by trial of this means the cultivators of the 

 land found their labours to t> e richly repaid. Thus, in estimating the gains 

 of individuals and of the state, on this score, the comparison should be 

 made, not with the value of property and population which remained 

 twenty years ago, but with what would have remained now, if the then 

 existing inducements to emigration had continued to go on and to increase, 

 as they would have done, with time. 



Next the actual increase of intrinsic value of marled lands is far from 

 being even yet fully appreciated, because of the generally prevailing and 



