THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



229 



rows were marked off, beginning alongside of, and 

 parallel to, the upper sides of the ditches. Thus 

 the rows continued, generally, along and around a 

 hill-side. But at the short curves of the ditches, 

 the corn rows were made to run out straight, and 

 ended as each one reached the ditch. As the mark- 

 ing off of rows reaches the ditch next above, of 

 course they will not exactly coincide with the 

 course of the bank, and some short rows will be 

 required to fill out the interval. But, taken alto- 

 gether, the tillage rows are long, not inconveniently 

 curved, or too much varying from a level any- 

 where ; and there is no waste of land or of crop, 

 except in the narrow bottom of each side ditch. 



In reference to the remarks of Mr. Cocke, Mr. 

 Old said that while he admitted that any ordinary 

 rains might be absorbed by very deep ploughing, 

 and so not produce washing, yet sometimes there 

 fell rains so heavy and sudden, that, if not con- 

 ducted off, the surplus must escape in torrents down 

 the hill-sides, and would gutter and wash off the 

 ploughed and loose layer of earth. In such cases, 

 however rare, the washing might be even the greater 

 in proportion to the previous depth of the plough- 

 ing. But he denied that preventing the land from 

 being washed into gullies, was the only benefit re- 

 sulting from the use of guard furrows. The rapid 

 passage of large volumes of water over the land, 

 must necessarily do great injury, by a general abra- 

 sion of the soil, by carrying off the soluble matters, 

 the minutely divided particles, and the decayed ve- 

 getable matter, which constituted the chief value 

 of the soil. This view of the subject will be forci- 

 bly illustrated by calling the attention of every 

 observant farmer to the fact, that he may manure 

 a galled place on his farm as highly as he pleases, 

 and if left exposed to be passed over by every rain 

 that falls until the next rotation, the improvement 

 will have disappeared, the manure will have been 

 washed out, and the same gall will have to be cured 

 again, and that too when the washing has not been 

 to the extent of forming a gully. 



Mr. F. G. Ruffin, of Albemarle, said that he could 

 not speak positively of the necessity of hill-side 

 ditches to a soil with which he was not familiar. 

 But in Albemarle he thought they were considered 

 evidences of bad farming. The soil upon which 

 he resided, the South-West Mountain, was not only 

 peculiarly porous in texture, but it rested upon a 

 substratum of broken and decomposing rock, and 

 there was ample evidence of the percolation of wa- 

 ter to considerable depths through both the surface 

 and the substratum — not only in rail road cuts and 

 other excavations, where a deposit of mud between 

 the seams of the rock had been found at a depth 

 of eighteen feet from the surface, but also in the 

 bold wet-weather springs, which rose after heavy 

 rains at the foot of the hills, not unfrequently in 

 hard trodden roads, in streams as large as one's 

 arm. 



There were some portions of this land where the 

 soil was too deep for the most favorable action of 

 this kind, but in those, as in the variety of other 

 soils in Albemarle, even on the steepest hill-sides, 

 he had never seei4ditches resorted to. Deep plough- 

 ing was considered sufficient for all ordinary rains, 

 and those that would not be absorbed by the greater 

 depth, and consequent greater spongincss, of the 

 soil, would break any ditches that would be com- 

 patible with cultivation of the land. He had seen 

 rains in Albemarle, almost water-spouts, that did 

 great damage to the hills; one, in particular, upon 

 a portion of a field of his own, from the effects of 



which the land had not recovered in fourteen years. 

 But a mill-dam would not have stood against it, 

 much less a ditch bank. 



In laying off corn rows, it was usual, there to 

 lead the furrows by-?a gentle grade to the depres- 

 sions on the face of the slope, into which they emp- 

 tied ; and as those depressions were frequent, the 

 furrows were rarely long. It was not thought good 

 management to make them long, as the current of 

 water was thereby increased in volume, and more 

 soil was moved. 



After what he had heard to-day from gentlemen 

 of greater age and experience than himself, espe- 

 cially from those who had changed their opinions 

 on this subject, he would not presume to say that 

 ditches were unnecessary in Amelia and Powhatan; 

 but still he thought that a longer rotation, which 

 would give a turf upon the land, and that turf sub- 

 verted to a depth of seven or eight inches for corn, 

 the ploughing to be finished by or before Christmas, 

 so as to kill or cripple the bore worms, and pulver- 

 ize the soil by the winter frosts, would go far to 

 obviate the necessity of these ditches. 



In answer to questions put by some of the mem- 

 bers, Mr. R. said — The hills in Albemarle were not 

 steeper than he had seen in Amelia and Powhatan, 

 but there were many more of them, and they were 

 longer; could not say that he perceived much dif- 

 ference in the general texture of the soils; the 

 South-West Mountain lands, though remarkably 

 a'dhesive, were thought rather too light and open 

 for first-rate wheat lands; the soil on Fighting 

 Creek* reminded him a good deal of some of the 

 soils on Ivy Creek, in Albemarle; there he had 

 known a field of Mr. Garth's, a part of it which 

 was in oats, so riddled by rain, shortly after the 

 crop was seeded that he had re-ploughed and re- 

 seeded the whole of it ; but Mr. Garth never used 

 hill-side ditches. The Ivy Creek lands were light, 

 easily worked, with a good deal of sand in them, 

 and were considered first-rate tobacco lands. 



Mr. Charles Selden, of Powhatan, said that after 

 what had already been stated by others, it would 

 be useless for him to offer any argument in favor 

 of hill-side ditches. He would be content to state 

 his decided approbation of their use, and his con- 

 currence with what had been said as to their ad- 

 vantages, both to prevent the washing away of soil 

 and to aid its improvement. The abuses of the 

 system, and their ill consequences, he did not con- 

 sider to be reasons against the proper use. 



As to the labor and cost of construction, each 

 farmer must decide that for himself, and according 

 to the circumstances of his land. If, deeming the 

 theory correct, and the application to his land pro- 

 per, a beginner should take for trial a piece of 

 ground the most subject to injury from washing, 

 and make the required ditches, according to the 

 directions stated in the earlier part of this discus- 

 sion. He would add to these directions what he 

 deemed an important part of his own practice. In 

 the first ploughing out the ditches, he found two 

 good plough-furrows enough for the highest seventy 

 yards of each ditch. For the next seventy, as the 

 rain-water flows downward and increases in volume, 

 three furrows' width is given to the ditch, — and so 

 on, an additional furrow's width is given for every 

 additional seventy yards' length of the ditch, to its 

 place of discharge. 



The graduated ditches or their banks are not an 



* Dr. John B. Harvie's farm, on which the meeting 

 the Club that day was held. E. R. 



