346 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



double its price in the sixth year. We have 

 lately passed through his corn field, a portion 

 of . similar land, which had been "laid by" with 

 peas for the last three years of successive cul- 

 tivation, and though it has not escaped the com- 

 mon disasters of drought and chinch bug, the 

 groAvth of stalks showed that it had "cut out" 

 for an eight barrel crop. 



We have heard a case of a farmer in a tide 

 water country, who cultivated the same land in 

 corn every year of his long life, making an an- 

 nual average of six barrels per acre, whose only 

 peculiarity was sowing peas at the last working. 

 We know a gentleman who, on stiff land, culti- 

 vated a lot in corn for eight years with peas 

 sowed at the last working, in the ■ baulk, and 

 turned in when in full bearing, and made fine 

 crops all the time. 



Instances to the same effect may be seen in 

 Mr. Edmund Ruffin^s account of the pea culture 

 of North Carolina in his essay on peas- 



This may be bad " rotation," but it is good 

 farming, if profit be the test. It is a rotation 

 we do not pretend to recommend, because it 

 will not suit all lands, because economical con- 

 siderations, very distinct from principles of ro- 

 tation, may and will interfere to modify this or 

 any other system. We state these facts as cases 

 in point, to prove that we should not conclude 

 that " an improved system for a cotton planta- 

 tion" is necessarily bad because it makes one 

 crop of peas pay for three years' exhaustion, 

 and requires "five regular ploughings in three 

 years." 



ABANDONMENT OF FARMS IN NEW 

 ENGLAND. 



The following extracts from two letters lately 

 written by Mr. Brown, the editor of the New 

 England Farmer, and published in a late num- 

 ber of that paper, exhibit a state of things with 

 which the agricultural prospects of Virginia 

 contrast most favourably. Here' we are an- 

 nually opening up and improving thousands of 

 acres, and restoring fields — not farms — that 

 have been exhausted and abandoned. All we 

 want is an additional supply of negro labour to 

 make the whole of loAver Virginia blossom as 

 the rose. 



The rise in price of improved farms has kept 

 pace with the progress of improvement ; and 

 we have already, instances in the interior, 

 where no contiguity to city or market could 



produce speculative or factitious value, in which 

 the estimate of the commissioners of assessment 

 has risen 800 per cent, in fifteen years. 



" It is an incontrovertible fact that there are 

 thousands of acres in Massachusetts, and tens 

 of thousands in New Hampshire, upon which 

 the energies of man should never be wasted. 

 There are acres enough without them. There 

 are acres without original fertility, on mountain 

 tops, or sides, away from streams, or good roads, 

 swept by rains, and scorched by summer suns. 

 They are difficult of access to plough, manure 

 and plant, or if, providentially, a crop is grown, 

 to secure it. To persist in their cultivation is 

 a contest between man and the powers of nature, 

 in which the former will certainly come off 

 second best. It has been going on now between 

 one and two hundred years. The axe and fire 

 has swept the noble forests from the hills, while 

 innumerable crops of rye have taken up the 

 virtues of the virgin soil, to which nothing has 

 been returned. By removing the forests, the 

 springs that ran among the hills have disap- 

 peared, and gra,dually, year after year, the rich, 

 leafy mould has been taken up, until nought 

 but a scanty and innutritious vegetation is left 

 springing from a bleached, thin and inactive 

 soil! 



" Man, here, is yielding to natural, but inex- 

 orable laws. The gloomy records of his defeat 

 are left upon the land. All along the way, oc- 

 casionally in the valley, sometimes on the nar- 

 row plain, but mostly on the bleak hills, stand 

 dreary monuments not only of his defeat, but of 

 his retreat, also, from the unequal contest. . In 

 a brief travel of only one day, stand more than 

 fifty deserted mansions to attest this fact ! 

 These are not the tenements of the first settlers, 

 but the re-buildings of their descendants, never 

 to be repeated : one, only, mostly demolished, 

 showing the log structure of the pioneer. Here 

 and there some careful hand has removed the 

 dilapidated frame work, and the cellar only 

 marks the spot of the habitation. In the other 

 cases, no herds stand in their stalls, no smokes 

 curl from their chimneys, and the grass — 

 nature's beautiful covering where man mars — 

 has overspread the pathway to the doors." 



•K- -X- * ^- * * -X- . 



"All around these once fair representatives of 

 civilization, Nature is rapidly making encroach- 

 ments ; and there are unerring tokens of her 

 impending approach. The clang of the anvil 

 has ceased; the mill grinds not, nor saws, and 

 the mountain stream babbles or roars along its 

 unimpeded course. The majesty of State laws 

 compels to a good condition of the public roads, 

 though there are few to travel them. But 

 Nature is on her triumphal march, and trenchen 

 upon these as well as the garden and the field. 

 First comes the grass, like the atmosphere, de- 

 termined that there shall be no vacuum in 

 nature. It covers the fallows of husbandry, 

 the deep cuts mad^e for the avenues of trade ; 



