CULTURE AND CURING IN VIRGINIA. 197 



The counties of Chesterfield, Powhatau, and Goochland, being largely on the Jurassic and Triassie formations, 

 the rocks in places are sandstones ; in others, granites. 



Hanover, Louisa, Caroline, Fluvanna. and Spotsylvania the air-curing district are for the most part on the 

 same formations (Primary, running through the Triassie and Jurassic), and differ somewhat from the last group 

 mentioned in the underlying and the surface rocks, as also in the soils. The gneissoid rocks of western Hanover and 

 Caroline pass into the micaceous and hornblendic in Louisa, Spotsylvania, and Fluvanna, constituting the best 

 tobacco soils of this famous sweet-filler section. 



Pittsylvania, Henry, Patrick, and portions of Halifax and Franklin counties the yellow tobacco district east 

 of the Blue Eidge mountains may be classed together, as mainly of the same geologic formation, the outcropping 

 rocks being principally quartz, syenite, feldspathic and hornblendic, mixed often and largely with mica, slate, etc. 



Rockbridge, Botetourt, Eoanoke, Craig, Montgomery, Giles, Bland, Tazewell, Eussell, Scott, and Washington 

 counties are principally on the Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian, the rocks being mainly limestone, sandstone, 

 Potsdam shales, slates, greenstone, epidote, and hornblende. The soils vary from very poor to very rich. The 

 siliceous soils are best adapted to tobacco, limestone soils producing a strong, bony tobacco, of inferior quality. 



CONDITION OF TOBACCO SOILS. 



The soils of the Middle and Piedmont districts best suited to tobacco are generally of easy tillage. The stiff 

 red clays are refractory if plowed out of condition ; but if well broken in the fall, turning under vegetable matter, 

 they become friable in the spring, are readily brought into fine tilth, and, if properly handled, work easily all 

 through cultivation. A soggy blue clay never works easily, and should never be planted to tobacco. 



All the light gray soils, sandy or slaty, are easily worked ; and these are the preferred soils for fine tobacco. 

 Many counties abound in a rich, flat soil, too wet for any crop, and hundreds of thousands of acres of valuable 

 land lie idle for want of drainage. Little progress has been made in reclaiming these lands. Some good soils in 

 the mountain region are hard to cultivate, owing to the steepness of the hills and the abundance of bowlders and 

 loose stones on the surface. 



The soils of Virginia east of the mountains are generally tender, as the galled and gullied surface over large 

 areas too plainly indicate. For generations the mode of culture has been of the shallowest and most imperfect 

 character, followed by its inevitable results an impoverished soil and fields abandoned, because no longer capable 

 of yielding a return for labor. Many good farmers are improving their lands by deeper plowing on all lands 

 cultivated and by adopting the horizontal system on hilly lands, so as to dispose of surface water without cutting 

 the soil into gullies. 



Of the gray soils, the gneissoid and micaceous are the most tender, the syenitic, hornblendic, feldspathic, and 

 argillaceous being less liable to wash. 



The valley and mountain soils are generally of close texture, and are not liable to wash, except on some of the 

 sandstone spurs of the mountains. 



Nearly every foot of land in the Middle and Piedmont divisions west of longitude 77 30' and south of latitude 

 38, now in old fields, occupied by pines, broom-straw, briers, and sassafras, produced while under tillage one or 

 more crops of tobacco. Thousands of acres of such lands are capable, with a little help, of producing tobacco again, 

 in some cases of a better type than the first grown upon them. No reliable estimate can be made of the number of 

 acres turned out as old fields, or of the proportion such lands bear to the area once cleared ; but a careful analysis of 

 reports justifies the opinion that of the lands turned out more than three-fourths are in an improving condition, 

 ready to furnish large supplies of fuel, compensating in some measure for the destruction of the original forest. 

 In some sections, especially of the Middle district, there are now more " old fields " than arable lands, while in others 

 these rarely occur. The exhausted lands, gullied and washed until there is none of the original soil left, are for all 

 practical purposes worthless, and are likely to remain so for a long time. 



Lands in the tobacco belt east of the mountains, when worn and turned out, grow up first either in " poverty 

 grass" (often called "hen's nest") or in broom-sedge, according to the amount of fertility left in the soil when it 

 ceases to be cropped. If very poor, the poverty grass first takes possession, then broom-sedge, and afterward pines. 

 The length of time it takes these worn soils to recuperate depends largely upon their original fertility and the nature 

 of the subsoil, and if the underlying rocks are of the character to disintegrate slowly under the action of the 

 atmosphere, rains, heat and frost, recuperation will be faster than where such agencies are wanting, the softer 

 rocks, micaceous and feldspathic, yielding more readily to the action of the elements than the harder ones of the 

 gneissoid, hornbleudic, and granitic group. About ten years' growth of pines and other plants will restore these 

 old fields to a moderate condition of fertility, if this growth is cut down and allowed to rot on the laud. 



Requiring clean culture, this crop exposes the soil for a long period to drenching rains, which injure the land, 

 one year with another, fully as much as the abstraction of fertility by the tobacco plants. Nevertheless, with 

 proper care, lands can be readily improved by a rotation of tobacco, wheat, clover, etc. Wheat succeeds better 

 after tobacco than after corn, even when the manuring and cultivation of the preceding crop are the same. It is 

 the received opinion that tobacco is less exhaustive than corn, much less than sorghum, and about ;is exhaustive- 



N cabbage, beets and potatoes. 



791 



