THE SOUTHE 



UN PLANTER 



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^excused for not admitting his conclusions. Mr. R., 

 if I mistake not, reasons rather from inferences, 



. than facts. If he sees acid plants growing on a 

 soil lie immediately concludes the soil itself is acid. 

 AVhy ? Because he has ascertained, by chemical 

 tests, that the peculiar acid of the plant is in the 

 soin No; he does not stop to examine the soil, 

 though, indeed, analysis would detect the acid, if 

 it was really present; hut he iiifcrs its presence fro ni 

 the fact that the plant is acid. Again, he examines 

 a soil which he supposes to be acid and he finds 

 no trace of " carhonate of lime'' ^ in it, he infers, there- 

 fore, from the entire absence of this salt, (though 

 there may be an abundance of the alkali, (fivie,) 

 which is a better antacid than the carbonate' of Ivnte,) 

 that the acid is certainly in excess in the soil, paid 

 it needs carbonate of lime to neutralize it. Now 

 it is manifestly very unsafe to reason from such 

 premises. Every body knows that a sour, siceet and 

 bitter plant will often grow equally well, on the 

 same soil, and side by side, yet few would believe, 

 in the absence of any fact to prove it, that all these 

 three ingredients existed in the soil at the same 

 time. Corn at a certain stage of its growth con- 

 tains in the stalk a large amount of f^rape sugar. 

 Does any one believe that the soil actually con- 

 tained ail this sugar and that it was abstracted by 

 the roots of the corn from the soil '? Or is it sup- 

 posable that all the citric acid of the lemon was 

 taken directly from the soil? If so, the soil itself 

 must have had a decidedly sour taste ! It will not 

 do to infer any thing as to the composition of a soil 

 from either the presence or absence of any of those 

 vegetable acids we meet with every day in plants — 

 for that every living plant has a perfect, respiration, 

 circulation, digestion and nutrition peculiar to its 

 own organism, and can by its OAvn vital energies 

 manufacture, so to speak, from the various binary 

 compounds present in most soils and from the car- 

 bonic acid ever present in the atmosphere, any ter- 

 nary compound natural to it, such as grape sugar, 

 oxalic acid, &c. is just as demonstrable a proposi- 

 tion in vegetable, as any in animal physiology. 

 Mr. Huffin, with characteristic candor, admits that 

 the "wood sorrel" (which is of the same family 

 with the " sheep sorrel" (ju7nex) and contains pre- 

 cisely the same acid) prefers a rich and calcareous 

 soil, and will eveji grow on one calcareous to excess^'' 

 and further, that "it would seem the '■wood. sorreV 

 gets its acid, from the atmosphere^'' and yet strange to 

 say, he is unwilling to admit that the sheep sorrel 

 gets its acid in the same way. 



Professor Johnsfl>n gives a very plausible expla- 

 nation of the matter. It is in substance this : The 

 leaves of all i^lants (as all admit) are constantly in 

 the day time absorbing from the atmosphere a cer- 

 tain gas, called " carbonic ac'ul,''^ which differs from 

 oxalic acid,^^ only in this, that it contains a little 

 more oxygen than the latter. Well, when this car- 

 bonic acid gets into the leaf it undergoes a decom- 

 position (as all admit) and in most plants the car- 

 bon and oxygen which had been in combination in 

 the form of carbonic acid^^ are set free — the oxy- 

 gen as to the most pai-t is expired or breathed out 

 by the plant — while tlie carbon mixes with the sap 

 which has come from the roots up to tiie leaf and 

 tlience circulates over the whole plant — to deposit 

 and form its woody fibre. Now, if when this " car- 

 bonic acM^^ first reaches the leaf of the sorrel, it is 

 made to part with a certain portion cmly of its oxy- 

 gen, oxalic acid is formed — unites with the saj) 

 and then disseminates itself through the whole 

 plant. This, by way of explanation. 



But that there is not often a particle of oxalic 

 acid''' present in the soil where the sheep sorrel 

 grows, admits of but little doubt, and that its growth 

 is in no way favored by the presence of that acid 

 has been demonstrated times and again. If kept 

 clear of other more hardy plants it will grow quite 

 as well, if not better, on a calcareous soil, than on 

 any other. Indeed, a friend of mine, who is a sort 

 of " amateur farmer," assures me that after liming 

 a piece of land, the sorrel came up thick, where it 

 had never been seen before, and though he does 

 not believe the lime brought it on the land, as many 

 honestly do, that guano brought the "joint worm," 

 he knows the lime did not in the least prevent it. 

 I have myself repeatedly seen luxuriant sorrel after 

 liming, and have even seen a flourishing crop on an 

 ash pile where certainly there were antacids enough 

 to correct any reasonable amount of acidity. Still 

 it is not to be doubted that liming does, after so 

 long a time, cause the sorrel to disappear, and white 

 clover to take its place, and so if ashes be spread 

 on a yard infested with ribwort it will cause that 

 plant to disappear and greensward to come in its 

 place. But let it not be inferred from this that the 

 soil in either case was acid, but rather that it was 

 not of the proper composition to grow clover and 

 grass ; as soon, however, as it was made so, by lime 

 and ashes, the sorrel and ribwort being less hardy- 

 plants than the other two, were crowded out. 



Neither can I believe, for a moment, that an acid 

 or any other poisonous substance, has any thing to 

 do with the growth of the old field pine, for it is 

 not until the soil has been completely exhausted of 

 all that can generate an acid,* and can no longer 

 sustain any other vegetation that this beautiful 

 evergreen makes its appearance : and in this benefi- 

 cent arrangement do we see strikingly manifested 

 the wisdom of the Divine Architect, who mercifully 

 deposited and ever preserves in these soils the germ 

 of their own renovation, so that when from sheer 

 exhaustion, they can no longer yield to the diligent 

 husbandman their fruit in due season, and are alto- 

 gether too poor to sustain any of the artificial 

 grasses, they may cover, as it were, the shame of 

 their nakedness with their own perennial pine — 

 nature's perpetual green manure — and thus unaided 

 and without any labor or expense, on the part of 

 the farmer, speedily and thoroughly accomplish the 

 work of self-renovation. * ^ 



Amongst the best soils in "middle Virginia" ori- 

 ginally, and some of th°e finest tobacco soils in the 

 State now are many of those at this time heavily 

 timbered with the old field pine. These lands, which 

 were cleared by our industrious ancestors half a cen- 

 tury ago, perhaps, and worked by them till worn out, 

 and worthless, are now after a lapse of, probably, 

 no more than thirty years, quite as good as they 

 ever were. These pines in their early growth re- 

 quired but little nutriment other than moisture and 

 carbonic acid, the one to supply sap and the other 

 carbon. The former being plentifully present in 



■* It. is an admitted fact that the circumstances, which 

 most favor the generation of acids in a soil, are an abun- 

 dance of vegetable matter saturated with water, by which 

 a slow decomposition may take place. Now it is manifest 

 that in a sandy soil, long subjected to hard cropping and 

 grazing, there can be present but little vegetable matter, 

 and consequently but little acid can be formed ; yet it is on 

 just such, worn-out old field, and on the highest, dryest and 

 poorest parts of it, that the thickest set of pine* is seen, 

 while on the low, swampy places, where acids, if any where, 

 are to be found, the pine is never to be seen, except as a 

 sickly, stunted growth. 



