412 FORMER CONDITION OF LAND. 



proved either profitless, entirely useless, or absolutely and in some 

 cases greatly injurious. And even after trying to avoid the first 

 known errors, and using all other supposed means for giving dura- 

 ble and increasing fertility to my worn and poor fields, at the end 

 of six years, instead of having already achieved great improve- 

 ment, I was compelled to confess that no part of my poor land was 

 more productive than when my labours commenced, and that on 

 much of it, a ten-fold increase had been made of the previously 

 large space of galled and gullied hill-sides and slopes. 



When more correct opinions had been formed in after-time of the 

 actual condition and requirements of such poor soils, it seemed an 

 astonishing delusion, which would have been altogether ludicrous 

 but for its serious effects, that I should have counted so much on 

 improving such a soil, and by such means. With the exception 

 of a small part near the river banks (perhaps one-fifth of the then 

 cleared and cultivated land), which had been originally of very fine 

 quality, and, however abused and exhausted, was still good land, 

 the farm generally consisted of a soil of sandy loam, usually about 

 three inches deep, and through which a single-horse plough could 

 easily penetrate and turn up the barren and more sandy yellow 

 sub-soil. Grazing the fields, when not under tillage, had been the 

 regular practice ; and under it very little growth was to be seen 

 except the light and diminutive " hen's nest grass" (aristida gra- 

 cilis), which formed the almost universal cover of the poor fields 

 of lower Virginia, in the intervals between tillage. Add to these 

 circumstances of very poor and shallow soil, and barren and sandy 

 sub-soil, and almost no vegetable cover to turn under, that every 

 field was more or less hilly, and liable to be washed by heavy rains 

 ^and the judicious reader will see nothing but false confidence 

 and ignorance displayed in my bold adoption of Taylor's system. 

 Nor was I convinced of my error until after nearly all the fields 

 had been successively thrown into ridges by two-horse ploughs, and 

 all the hilly and more slightly inclined surface had been awfully 

 washed and gullied, by the exposure of the loose sub-soil to the 

 action of the streams of rain-water. 



While these my supposed measures of improvement were in pro- 

 gress, I was in habits of frequent and familiar intercourse with my 

 oldest and best friend, and former guardian, Thomas Cocke, who 

 resided then on his Aberdeen farm, and since and now, on Tarbay, 

 adjoining my own land. My friend was a man for whose mind and 

 mental cultivation I could not but entertain a very high estimation. 

 But, though all his life a practical and assiduous cultivator, and 

 finding his greatest pleasure in his farming labours, he yet was a 

 careless, slovenly, and bad manager, and of course an unprofitable 

 farmer. Therefore, on this subject, I held in but light esteem the 

 opinions which he maintained, which were opposed to my own. 



