442 LEGUMINOUS PLANTS. 



better to be sowed in old plowed up brooinsedge fields, and there, 

 whilst the land is being fertilized, one of the best provision crops for 

 stock, and the best of hay for milk cows in winter, is produced. And 

 a still further advantage possessed by this valuable legume is its un- 

 equaled capacity for, and its unapproachable merit as an intervening 

 crop, (being both a renovating and' a food crop), between small grain 

 or root crop in the spring and a grain crop in the fall. Do you ask 

 more of any vegetable renovator? It is more valuable than tht 

 English turnip crop, and this crop, by those enlightened and eminently 

 practical farmers, is estimated annually at millions of pounds sterling. 

 It is doubtful if England could tide it over the next two years if de- 

 prived of her turnip crop. It is the foundation of her stock and ma- 

 nure production. In contrasting the Southern field pea with the Eng- 

 lish turuip crop we begin to preceive its immense value to southern 

 agriculture, and realize that too often, in reaching after the so-called 

 money crops, we have neglected the best fertilizers, (as well as food 

 crop), ever given to the agricultural world. 



In considering the present impoverished condition of the lands of 

 the South, we are forced to confess it is the work of tillage — of 

 injudicious, ruinous tillage. Where husbandry predominates over tillage 

 there is but little leaking out of the elements of fertility in a soil, and there 

 is no estimating how long they will remain to supply the food necessary 

 to vigorous plant growth. The grasses, including clover and peas, are 

 the grand elements for preserving and augmenting these elements in the 

 soil. Hence we see all countries where husbandry prevails grow rich in 

 soil, particularly if the tilled portion of the land is under a judicious 

 system of rotation. Now, tillage, or the simple cultivation of land, puis 

 nothing of any value in it, but is, of itself, a necessary evil; evil because of 

 exposing the soil to a scorching sun, often reducing it to a mass of lifeless 

 clods, and exposing it to an exhausting leaching process, which takes out 

 its very life blood. The cleaner and longer%ontmued the culture, the more 

 the injury to the land from the destruction of its humus, and from the 

 greatest of all destructives, leaching. The injury is augmented as the land 

 is rolling and broken. Hence cotton and tobacco, (the first of which ii 

 not an exhauster of land, per se) have brought ruin to the best acres of the 

 South, whilst small grain and the grasses have husbanded and increased 

 the natural fertility of the lands of our Northern neighbors. Lands in 

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

 case of tobacco should receive, (outside the aid of rotation), a. generous 

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

 the productive capacity of the soil of the South as contrasted 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 



