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these too great staples are grown should be level lands, and in the 

 case of tobacco should receive, (outside the aid of rotation), a gen- 

 erous manuring. But if I have given the true reason for the rapid 

 decline of the productive capacity of the soil of the South as con- 

 trasted with that of the Northern States, let me take you one step 

 further and show you that in the rich region of country lying 

 northwest of the Ohio river, we find a very great difference in the 

 material prosperity of the farmers there. A portion of them are 

 prosperous, while others are experiencing all the evils resulting 

 from the comprehensive term hard times. It is not difficult to 

 learn the cause. The grain-maker, whose whole energies have been 

 devoted to extracting the fertility of his soil for many consecutive 

 years, in magnificent harvests, finds his crops growing less and less 

 each yar, while the stock-raiser is prosperous, having grown rich 

 while making his land rich. 



Time has here demonstrated a great truth which agriculturists 

 should not ignore. Let our Southern farmers profit by its inevita- 

 ble teaching. Let us determine to improve our destructive farm- 

 ing; give our lands a chance to grow better instead of depreciating 

 yearly ; build up the waste places ; infuse new life into our Southern 

 land, beautiful still in her decline, and endeared the more as we 

 see her slowly sinking under the drain mercilessly kept open by 

 her own children, in the veins through which her priceless life 

 blood flows. 



Since writing the above, I have accidentally found an old docu- 

 ment upon " Southern Agricultural Exhaustion and its Remedy," 

 from the able pen of the late Judge Ruffin, of Virginia. Al- 

 though this article was not written specially upon the merits of the 

 field pea as a renovator of worn lands, yet it shows its great value 

 to the agriculture of the South so much more forcibly than any- 

 thing I can say in advocating its claims, that I take the liberty of 

 quoting the following paragraphs entire, and with them will close 

 my letter, already too long : 



" At the risk of uttering what may be deemed trite or superfluous 

 to many, I beg leave to state concisely the fundamental laws, as I 

 conceive them to be, of supply and exhaustion of fertilizing matters 

 to soils and aliment to plants. 



" All vegetable growth is supported, for a small part, by the 

 alimentary principles in the soil, (or by what we understand as its. 



