THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



161 



marls were rarely applied, and scarcely known 

 as a manure until after the appearance of his 

 work. Mr. Wynne's farm is but an illustration 

 of many others, and he assured me that he 

 knew many farms which produced ten bushels 

 of wheat now, where they did one ten years ago. 



Farms with improvements on them can be 

 bought from three to twenty dollars per acre 

 through the whole peninsula, with perhaps few 

 exceptions about Hampton and the lower part 

 of York county ; some few very rich farms are 

 held higher ; but I saw good farms off the rivers, 

 and some on, that can be bought for five, eight 

 and ten dollars per acre. Here, it is not more 

 than fifteen miles from one river to the other. — 

 At any place, oysters, fish, and fowl abound, of 

 the finest quality. The south side of James 

 River is much the same kind of land, except 

 that it is sandier and thinner, and there is much 

 heavy timber in Surry, Isle of Wight, Nanse- 

 mond, Princess Anne, the surface flat, and much 

 of the two last slashy. There is some good 

 land on the Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers. 

 On the Nansemond and about Hampton, large 

 quantities of melons, and potatoes, and other 

 vegetables, are grown for the northern markets. 

 The farms here are smaller and the lands higher 

 than the others I have named. There are tracts 

 to be found on the rivers, which an enterprising 

 man can pay for in the wood in a few years, by 

 cutting wood and timber. The lands between 

 the York and Rappahannock rivers, and so on 

 through up to the Potomac, differ little in qua- 

 lity and price with the lands I have described. 

 Gloucester county is considered one of the best 

 in lower Virginia. Want of space compels me 

 to cut my epistle short. 



1 might say much more in relation to means 

 of improvement, and go more minutely into the 

 character of some lands that 1 have merely al- 

 luded to; but f think from my own observation, 

 reading and acquaintance with men who have 

 travelled over those portions of t he Union which 

 I have not, that Eastern Virginia presents 

 greater inducements to Northern men to emi- 

 grate there than any portion of the United 

 States, and I should recommend any one wish- 

 ing to change his location to at least look at it. 

 I fear I shall tire your patience by my hurried 

 epistle. 



G. P. Lewis. 

 Huntington, L. 1, Feb. 28, 1845. 



From the Saturday American: 

 LIGHTNING RODS. 



I will consider the several queries proposed in 

 your favor of August 30th, in order. 



I. "Do the square rods possess any supe- 

 riority over the round ones as conductors of 

 electricity ?" 



Farady, one of the best authorities on-electrici-" 

 Vol. V.-21 



ty, asserts that the conducting power of a rod is 

 proportioned to its mass, or quantity of matter, 

 and not to its surface; and the same doctrine is 

 assumed by an English writer, in " Sturgeon's 

 Annals of Electricity." It is admitted that the 

 fluid pervades only the surface; still it is main- 

 tained that the conducting power depends on 

 the mass. I have not in my possession any set 

 of experiments which authorizes the opinion of 

 Farady, but he doubtless had, or he would not 

 have asserted it to be a fact. If this doctrine 

 be true, then so long as the mass is the same, it 

 is of no consequence whether the rod is square 

 or round. 



2. "Are a number of points attached to the 

 extremity of a rod preferable to one?" 



According to the experiments of Earl Stan- 

 hope, made more than sixty years ago, a single 

 needle will discharge a leyden jar more rapidly 

 than a bundle of the same, and in confor ity 

 with this, a single point is generally used for 

 the termination of lightning rods in Europe, 

 and J believe one is preferable to several — espe- 



'cially where they diverge from each other as 

 they commonly do In the lightning rods con- 

 structed by a skilful manufacturer in this city, 



| the upper termination is formed by a sharp cop- 

 per spindle, at the base, of the same diameter as 

 the rod — say an inch or three-fourths of an inch. 



I This is permanently gilded by the electrotype 

 process. It makes a beautiful finish, as may 

 be seen in the rods recently erected in the new 

 library of Yale College. The joint where the 

 spindle is attached to the rod is as perfect as 

 possible — a cylindrical projection on the spindle, 

 nicely turned, fitting closely into a hole in the 



I end of*the rod, nicely bored. All the parts of a 

 rod should be fitted by joints as close as this. — 

 Many rods have proved defective, within my 



, knowledge, merely because the parts were united 



j loosely by the hook-and-eye joint. 



3. "Are tubes to be preferred to solid cylinders, 

 on account of the greater surface exposed?" 



If Farady's doctrine, that the conducting 

 power is proportioned to the mass, is true, then 

 the tubes of a given diameter, cannot be equal 

 in power to solid rods. 



4. " Do the projecting points placed along the 

 whole length of a rod, and at right angles with 

 it, in some forms of conductors, increase the effi- 

 cacy Of the rods f 1 



In case a rod is well connected with the 

 ground, so as to deliver the charge freely, I 

 think such points are unnecessary, sO far as they 

 are supposed to dissipate the charge, and, there- 

 fore, to render it less dangerous than when it 

 traverses the rod in a concentrated state. They 

 are sometimes appended on the idea of inviting 

 or directing a lateral or horizontal charge; but 

 I have never seen any well attested fact of their 

 utility in such cases. It appears to me of great 

 importance to preserve all possible simplicity 



