300 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



as to escape or be overlooked in the scrutiny of the 

 most competent observer. 



The fact that, by continued cultivation or crop- 

 ping, the soil becomes exhausted of the food of 

 plants or incapable of producing them, is too evi- 

 dent to be denied ; and that in some cases a good 

 growth of a particular kind of plant may be had, 

 when the one previously cultivated has run out, 

 seems equally certain. The trees of our forests, no 

 less than the plants cultivated for food, seem subject 

 to this law, and the instances that prove such ten- 

 dency to change abound in every part of our coun- 

 try. In some places, where the timber on large 

 tracts of land has been felled and allowed to spring 

 up again without intervening cultivation, it is not 

 UHCommon to find the young growth consisting of 

 entirely different varieties from those that first oc- 

 cupied'the soil; and in some places, where the soil 

 has been cultivated for years and then left to it.sutf, 

 the same result of a total change of timber has en- 

 sued. In many places in Western New- York, 

 where the original growth was beech or even hem- 

 lock, we have seen, when this has been removed 

 and the soil left to itself, the whole surface covered 

 with cherry, laurel, and other trees, not one of which 

 was known previously to exist near the place. 



In Virginia and the states adjoining, it is well 

 known, and the fact has frequently been noticed, 

 that where the original growth is pine, as it is on a 

 very large part of the low country, when this is 

 cleared off, the succeeding growth of timber is never 

 pine, but a mixture of the hard woods, principally 

 oak, chestnut, and their congeners. On the contra- 

 ry, where these latter formed the original growth, 

 the succeeding one is most usually pine, growing up 

 in dense and almost impenetrable thickets. In some 

 of the oldest- settled parts of that region, this process 

 lias been repeated several times on the same lands ; 

 the former, but most unskilful practice in farming 



