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On Gyp§um» 



Read June 13th, 1809. 



Virginia^ Port Royal February lOth, 1810, 



Dear Sir, 



Both Judge Peters and yourself have mistaken my 

 experiment, respecting a field in corn, and another in 

 bird-foot clover, owing no doubt to the obscurity of my 

 language. These fields are not permanently occupied 

 by either plant, but alternately by both. One field pro- 

 duces a crop of corn, and the other being enclosed, re- 

 ceives the benefit of a crop of ungrazed vegetable mat- 

 ter. The succeeding year the ungrazed field is taxed 

 with the crop of corn, and the corn field fed with the 

 ungrazed vegetable. Both fields receive annually a 

 bushel of plaister to the acre ; in one it is sown upon the 

 bird- foot clover in March or April, and in the other 

 ploughed in at its fallow. The object is to ascertain 

 whether an annual bushel of plaister to an acre, com- 

 bined with a biennial relinquishment to the soil of its 

 natural vegetable product, will enable it to be severely 

 cropt every other year without impoverishment, or with 

 an addition to its fertility. The first effect would suffice 

 to check an evil, every where demonstrating the wretch- 

 ed state of our agriculture ; the second would be a 

 cheap and expeditious mode of improving the soil, even 

 where the state of agriculture is good. If doubts had not 

 been again excited by the seasonableness of the last 

 year as to rain, my convictions would have been settled 



