370 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



FURTHER EXTRACTS 'FROM THE PAPERS 

 OF THE NOTTOWAY CLUB. 



We are indebted to the above Association for a 

 mass of useful matter, the production of which is 

 owing to an excellent rule of the Club requiring 

 each member to furnish an original essay, or a 

 written report of one or more experiments during 

 the year. An admirable expedient to overcome 

 the almost universal repugnance of farmers to 

 writing, and to show with what force and effect 

 they can generally express themselves when under 

 the -pressure of unavoidable necessity. We wish 

 we had the power to impose some such obligation 

 upon every intelligent farmer in Virginia. We 

 should thereby indefinitely enlarge the common 

 stocif of useful agricultural knowledge, and secure 

 to each writer such improved facility in the ex- 

 pression of his thoughts as would render it no 

 longer a burden, but rather a pleasure to commu- 

 nicate them. We can at least commend this rule 

 to universal adoption. The selections we have 

 made are introduced at this time because they are 

 deemed seasonable to the wants of those of our 

 readers who may contemplate a change in their 

 existing systems of rotation, as the time for com- 

 mencing preparations for the corn crop is the ap- 

 propriate season to remodel the subdivisions of the 

 farm with reference to that object. We shall con- 

 tinue to give occasional selections from these pa- 

 pers, reserving their introduction to the seasons 

 deemed most appropriate to a profitable considera- 

 tion of their contents. 



THE BEST SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT. 



Mr. President, — Public attention is manifestly 

 alive to the importance of improving the agricul- 

 tural resources of Virginia. AVe live in an age of 

 progress. Improvements are being rapidly made 

 in all the departments of the arts and sciences. 

 Rail roads and telegraphs are bringing into close 

 proximity distant cities and countries. Machinery 

 is lightening the burdens of manual labor by its 

 adaptation and application to most of the industrial 

 pursuits of man, and an increasing knowledge of 

 chemistry is rendering all nature subservient to the 

 wants and comforts of society. He who does not 

 avail himself of those advantages in this go-a-head 

 age will assuredly be left far in the distance by his 

 more enterprising competitors in the race of im- 

 provement. We rejoice that the friends of agricul- 

 ture are not idle spectators. While improvements 

 are progressing in other departments of productive 

 labor, "the cultivation of mother earth," the no- 

 blest, most important and useful of them all, the 

 foundation and main spring of every other human 

 pursuit, is not without its trophies of progress and 

 improvement. -Although no systematic plan has 

 generally been adopted among us, it is encouraging 

 to know that many are inquiring after the right 

 way, and others are farming on principles which 

 will ultimately result in successful achievement in 

 the work of improving our farms, the necessity of 

 which is apparent to us all. With the hope of eli- 

 citing inquiry and calling the attention of the Club 



to the subject I propose to give my views (not our 

 practice) on the best system of management, hav- 

 ing regard to present profits and prospective im- 

 provement. 



The capacity of soils to give remunerating re- 

 turns for the capital and labor invested in agricul- 

 ture depends mainly on the amount of organic and 

 inorganic matter which they contain, their open- 

 ness and friability, their capacity to imbibe the at- 

 mospheric influences, to receive and retain moisture 

 to a given extent, and to part with it when redun-: 

 dant and excessive. To obtain all these desirable 

 ends and to bring all these advantages to the aid 

 of the farmer, the time-honored three-field rotation 

 must be abandoned, with its no less venerable and 

 destructive concomitant, hard grazing. This lies 

 at the root of the matter. They are principals and 

 accomplices in the great work of destruction, which 

 have well nigh ruined our country, once the garden 

 spot of the world, the Canaan of the whole earth. 



It is not my purpose here to repeat all the objec- 

 tions to, and evils of, the three-field rotation, at- 

 tended with hard grazing, for they are legion. I 

 will, however, mention a few of them. And 



First. Two exhausting grain crops in immediate 

 succession, one a hoe crop, the cultivation of which 

 requires the land to be frequently ploughed and 

 kept clean by the use of the hoe — thus exposing 

 the land to the injurious influences of our long 

 summer suns and the washing of the heavy rains 

 to which our climate is subject, must necessarily 

 and rapidly exhaust both the organic and inorganic 

 matter contained in our lands, by abstracting those 

 principles necessary to mature the growing crop, 

 and by evaporation and leaching, during the long 

 period in which land is exposed to those influences. 



Secondly. The three-field rotation (corn, unac- 

 companied with grazing,) does not afford time 

 enough for the land in its present exhausted condi- 

 tion to throw up a sufficient crop of vegetation to 

 remunerate for the supply of organic matter taken 

 from it in the production of the two previous ex- 

 hausting crops. Let us suppose, for a moment, 

 (which is not fact,) that each severed crop is equally 

 exhausting, and that the crop of grass the year of 

 rest is equal to the draft on the land in the produc- 

 tion of one of the exhausting crops, in the three 

 years rotation, there still remains to be supplied the 

 organic matter which was taken up from the land 

 to grow and perfect the other severed crop, to say 

 nothing of the waste of the inorganic matter of the 

 soil to which it had been exposed in the production 

 of the two severed crops. It is manifest, therefore, 

 that the term of rest should be lengthened 1 suffi- 

 ciently to restore to the land the full amount of 

 inorganic and organic matter taken from it in the 

 growth and perfection of the two preceding crops. 



Under a judicious three-shift system, unaccom- 

 panied by grazing, it may be possible that a soil, 

 originally good, should continue productive for a 

 length of time, through the ameliorating effects of 

 the heavy crop of vegetation during the years of 

 rest, together with the benefits of protection from 

 the baneful influences of the sun and the absence 

 of close treading by the hoof. But this is not the 

 custom of our farmers. Immediately after the 

 small grain crop is removed, the fields thus heavily 

 taxed by the production of two grain crops, are 

 closely grazed by the stock of the farm, and, per- 

 haps, of the neighborhood. And hence arises a 

 third objection to the system under review, to wit : 

 the closing up of the pores of the land and the 

 destroying of its friability by excluding the fer- 



