NOTE IV. 



FIRST VIEWS WHICH LED TO MARLING IN PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY. 

 (From flic Farmers' Register, Nov. 1839, with additions.} 



AMONG the persons who have read with interest the " Essay on 

 Calcareous Manures/' and have received as sound the novel theory 

 and doctrines there maintained, several have expressed.their curi- 

 osity which had been excited to learn the earliest facts, or the train, 

 of reasoning, which led to the suggestion of the causes of the de- 

 fect of naturally barren soils, and the remedy. Such inquiries 

 have been made of the writer by persons of investigating and well 

 informed minds, tout of very different education and pursuits; and 

 they were pleased to say, in regard to the concise verbal answers 

 made to their inquiries, that they deemed the details likely to be 

 interesting to many, and that if given to the public, they might 

 serve better to induce the consideration and enforcement of the 

 doctrines, than had been done by the mere arguments which had 

 been already published, convincing as they considered these argu- 

 ments to be. 



Though, without these reasons and solicitations, the writer might 

 have still refrained from touching this subject, it was not that he 

 had not held the same opinion, and, except in his own case, would 

 have urged the same course. It is certain, that the tracing of the 

 steps by which any new discovery or improvement has been reached, 

 must always be interesting in proportion to the admitted importance 

 of the results; and, indeed, such a statement seems almost necessary 

 to induce the reader to accompany the author from his first premises 

 to the remote conclusion, and which otherwise is only reached 

 through a devious and tedious passage, and by a course of reason- 

 ing which is wanting in interest, because the application and 

 tendenc}' of the arguments and proofs are not seen when they are 

 first presented. The objection which restrained the writer from 

 before pursuing a course which he would have highly approved in 

 others, was, that such a narrative of opinions and facts would be 

 entirely a personal narrative, and therefore obnoxious to the charge 

 of egotism throughout. The statement of the reasoning which led 

 to the successful use of fossil shells on the poor lands of lower 

 Virginia, would be incomplete if not accompanied by a narrative 

 of early labours, and the early as well as latest results and effects. 

 In the whole of this, there would be scarcely anything but state- 

 ments of what the writer thought, and reasoned, and performed. 

 But the subject must be so treated, or not at all; and having con- 

 sented to give the narrative, the writer will throw aside all scruples 

 and objections, and endeavour to enter as much into detail, as he, 

 if a reader of others' agricultural improvements and practical ope- 

 rations, would desire there to find. 



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