peas. 443" 



portion of them are prosperous, whilst others are experiencing all the 

 evils resulting from the comprehensive term hard limes. It is not diffi^ 

 cult to learn the cause. The grain maker, whose whole energies have 

 been devoted to extracting the fertility of his soil for ma*y consecutive 

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

 year, 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 inevitable teaching. 

 Let us determine to improve our destructive farming ; 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 document 

 upon "Southern Agricultural Exhaustion, and its Remedy," from the 

 able pen of the late Judge Euffin, of Virginia. Although 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 anything 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 fertility,) and 

 partly, and for much the larger portion, by matters supplied, either 

 directly or indirectly, from the atmosphere. More than nine-tenths, 

 usually, of the substance of every plant is composed of the ^same 

 four elements, three oi which — oxygen, nitrogen and carbon; — com- 

 pose the whole atmosphere; the fourth— hydrogen— is one of the constitu- 

 ent parts of water ; and, also, as a part of the dissolved water, hydrogen is 

 always present in the atmosphere, and in a great quantity. Thus, all 

 these principal elements of plants are superabundant, and always sur- 

 rounding every growing plant; and from the atmosphere (or through 

 the water in the soil) very much the larger portion of these joint supplies 

 is furnished to plants ; and so it is of each particular element, except ni- 

 trogen, much the smallest ingredient, and yet the richest and most im- 

 portant of all organic manuring substances, and of all plants. This, for 

 the greater part, if not for all of its small share in plants, it seems, is not 

 generally derived, even partially, from the air, though so abundant 

 therein, but from the soil, or from organic manures given to the soil. 



