294 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [1626, 627 



as indipensable an instrument on every upland plantation, as the steelyards 

 which serve to weigh the crop. It should be found, ready made, in every 

 country store and tinshop — it need not cost more than half a dollar, glass tubes 

 and all. But the planter may in case of need make one himself at any time, 

 from a piece of cane, or the tube of an elder, fitted at each end with a small 

 medicine bottle, such as may be obtained at any drugstore — the bottom being 

 cracked off and the bottle connected, neck downwards, with the horizontal tube, 

 by means of a smaller tube (of cane or elder) which can readily be made to fit 

 both the neck of the bottle and a hole bored into the side of the main piece ; the 

 tubes ought to be as wide as possible, but the glass tubes or bottles should not 

 exceed, for convenient use, half an inch in width ; and the horizontal tube ought 

 not to be shorter than twelve inches — two feet is the desirable length. The 

 facility of sighting over the top of the water in both ends, is much increased to 

 an inexperienced eye, by coloring it in some way — with logwood, indigo, Poke- 

 berry, Blood-root or the like. And it must be recollected, that the points sighted 

 — which should not be at excessive distances, especially when the instrument is 

 short — are on a level, not with the foot of the stick on which the instrument is 

 supported, but with the surface of the water, or the eye of the observer while 

 sighting ; and that, therefore, the height of the latter above ground must be 

 measured downwards from the point sighted on a pole at the other end, in order 

 to obtain the point on the ground corresponding to the foot of the instrument. 

 Moreover, if the surface is at all irregular, a single level taken at the middle of 

 the slope is not enough to insure the plow-hands keeping " on a line" with it at 

 any distance ; but several of these level lines ought to be seen and marked off, 

 once for all, if possible. 



626. Hillside " horizontalizing", however, is not of itself an 

 effectual remedy, unless accompanied by deep plowing, not only in 

 making the furrows between the rows, but in the entire process of 

 tillage. 



Unless this is done, so as to render the soil capable of absorbing rapidly a 

 large amount of water, the latter is sure (unless indeed the soil be extremely 

 porous of itself) to accumulate on the surface in the furrows, in heavy rains, to 

 such an extent as to break through at some weak point, from which, thereafter, 

 the washes will extend so much the more rapidly, as the process of horizontalizing 

 itself has made the collection of the water in channels easier. And the same 

 double inconvenience, precisely, always results from imperfect leveling of the 

 furrows, as any one who will observe the point can convince himself. 



Deep plowing, therefore, while advisable almost everywhere as a matter of 

 general policy, is doubly useful in lands subject to washing. And when, in 

 addition, analysis has demonstrated (as in the case of the " Table-lands") that 

 the richest portion of the soil still lies untouched beneath the present rango of 

 the plowshare, inducements enough, it would seem, are offered to planters for 

 the final abandonment of the profitless, and in the case of hilly lands, positively 

 suicidal system of shallow tillage, now so generally prevalent. 



627. When washing away can be prevented in lands circum- 

 stanced as is a large portion of the yellow lands of the State (viz : 

 underlaid, at the depth of a few feet, by pervious sands of con- 

 siderable thickness, the very causes which at present prove so fatal 

 in many cases, will be turned to positive advantage. For no 

 artificial arrangement, however, complete and expensive, could 

 bring about as perfect a condition of thorough drainage, as 

 naturally exists in these soils. 



When, however, the thickness of the retentive loam muck exceeds about 4 

 feet ; or when the underlying sand, instead of being loose and easily penetrated 

 by water, is more or less indurate and cemented into "hardpan", then thorough 



