SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
71 
of any kind of labor than others have made or ever will 
make. And then, by the terms of contract, they could 
be returned to their own country, relieving us and our 
land, from the responsibility of sn^iporting them and their 
posterity forever. 
Well, now, gentlemen, to be dune with niggers; for, 
like myself, 1 presume, you ore as tired of the. subject as 
John Randolph was of the tariff, when he said he would 
walk a mile to kick a sheep, let U' have a little talk that 
concerns ourselves only. I know it has no connection 
with the rest of my communication, but if 1 do not out 
with it now, while I am down with my pen, I don’t know 
when I shall have resolution to resume it again. 
I have a complaint against you in this wise. Though 
it may be vanity in me to say so, who should not say it, 
yet with all becoming modesty I am compelled to vaunt 
my own virtue. I am proud to say, that I am not only 
an old fogy, but the oldest of old fogies, a hard-shell old 
fogy. I believe in the Bible, the Union, home made ne- 
groes, hanging murderers, shooting fillibusters, in young 
folks dancing and old folks looking at them too ; in egg- 
nogg, holly and misletoe and old Santa Claus at Cfirist- 
mas times; and in a clean shaved face at all times. And 
gentlemen, before I was seduced and instigated by the 
devil to take the Southern Cultivator, I would have turned 
my back on no man for soundness on the fogy question. 
And, thank a fast anchor, I am yet sound enough to com- 
miserate the fallen condition of young America ; for I still 
knoio he is a fool whatever the puppy may think of me. 
But the sin of your CvllivoAor is that it has got me to suspect 
there is a sort of intermediate condition, a sort of purgatory, 
a lucid place between the “sound” slavery and the “sound” 
anti-slavery man, that it is worth a man’s while to ex- 
amine, to see if it is not only a habitable, but good 
country. Indeed, I fear I am falling from the grace of 
old fogyism. It is a very perplexing, nay, painful con- 
dition. Like a man sick with a disease which permits 
him, occasionally, to be tantalized with the hope of re- 
covery. Like the weak brother in the church who finds 
'himself, on trying occasions, yielding to the tempter. 
And what, perhaps, is more appropriate, like the lunatic 
with his lucid intervals 'I Have you never thought of the 
horror of such an existence as that of George the third, 
who lived through years of alternate spells of insanity 
and lucid intervals. How in those 'lucid intervals he 
must have suffered from apprehensions of a recurrence of 
his malady 1 Would it not be better, therefore, to be 
taken off by a stroke of lightning, than a lingering con- 
sumption 7 to fall into the arms of the devil at once, and 
enjoy all his gross sensualities in deep, hardened and 
oblivious vice, than to fight him at arm’s length for years 
and be conquered at last 7 To sink into the permanent 
forgetfulness of continued insanity than be tortured with 
fitful lunacy 1 To give up at once to the pleasing delu- 
sions of book farming than to take it by paroxysms, sub- 
ject to be rebuked by fogyism in my lucid intervals 1 I 
once knew a rollicking young debauchee who very much 
hated a distant relation, and who every time he had com- 
mitted an act that met his self-condemnation, would ex- 
claim “that drop of D blood in my veins will hang 
me at last in spite of all I can do.” Now, whenever, I 
attempt, unsuccessfully, some suggestion I see in your 
paper, old fogyism exclaims that the Cultivator will ruin 
me in spite of all its admonitions. If the attempt seems 
to succeed, old fogy shakes his conservative head and says 
it is the nature of insanity to be pleased and captivated 
with the kink that has confused the poor muddled brain. 
And the cunning wizzard has so fascinated me, that I can- 
not break with it; for let me at the end of the year, re- 
solve to save my peace and my dollar too, the result 
turns out as all reason does against inclination. And like 
the poor habitual drunkard who stands with eyes on the 
rosy god and his hand in his pocket holding his last dime 
trying to reason his clutched fist to stay there, out will 
it corns with the dime on the counter, with “d d the 
odds, plenty of money and no heirs, give us a drink.” 
xAnd so, let old fogy reason as persuasively as he can^. 
about l)ook forming and my dollar, when the time comes 
roiind for the January number, and I see the contents 
noticed in the ('kronicte. ant Sentinel, down goes the' 
dollar for the Cultivator ^ot another year. Thus, year by 
year, ever since its publication, have you robbed my 
pocket and crazed my head with your book farming. 
That is not all, lur so great is its witchery that I can’t re- 
sist the temptation to seize it first, out of the pile, when 
my post office bag is opened. So, il I am ruined by book 
farming, and life and my senses are spared me, you shall 
have one ^more letter from me, on God'‘s revenue 
against taking the Southern Cultivator ; in which 1 will 
give my own case as the text, and though you may not 
dread its severity, yet I think I will have my revenge 
when I tell you I will bore you with one as long as this. 
In accordance with what I have recommended to your 
correspondents in a former communication, I subscribe 
ray own proper name. 
Garnett Andrews. 
Washington, Ga., 1859. 
♦ ^ » 
NECESSITY OF MANURES. 
While soils remain covered by unbroken forests, they 
not only retain their fertility, but actually grow richer and 
richer from year to year, notwithstanding the vast 
amount of nutritive matter annually absorbed the roots of 
the growing trees. Everything thus taken from them is 
ultimately returned with interest. The leaves and bro- 
ken twigs, and eventually the branches, trunk and roots, 
in their decay, give back not only what they receive from 
the soil, but much in addition, that they have elaborated 
from the atmosphere. We receive from the hands of na- 
ture no worn-out lands ; but her system of tillage is very 
different from ours. 
The productive power of soils subjected to cultivation 
is gradually exhausted by the process. Some of the allu- 
vial lands of Virginia produced large annual crops of corn 
and tobacco for more than a century, without any return 
being made to them for the elements of fertility abstrac- 
ted ; but these lands are now nearly valueless. The sec- 
ondary “bottoms” of the Sciota and Miami may not at- 
tain an apparently diminished fertility for a still lon- 
ger period, but they must ultimately fail, and unless a 
system of cultivation radically different from that now 
pursued be adopted, become like the worn-out lands of 
some of the older portions of the country. Reliable sta- 
tistical tables prove beyond a doubt that, notwithstand- 
isg our improved farm implements and superior methods 
of cultivation, the average yield, per acre of the cultiva- 
ted lands of the State of New York, has decreased con- 
siderably since 1844, when the records on which these 
tables are founded were commenced. In corn the de- 
crease was nearly four bushels per acre ; in wheat near- 
ly two bushels; and in potatoes, partly owing to the lot, 
no doubt, twenty-two and a half bushels. The falling off 
would have been still greater had not deeper tillage and 
better husbandry furnished a partial oflTsel to the decreas- 
ed fertility of the soi. 
These are instructive facts, and should cause the farmer 
to pause and reflect. 
The fruitfulness of a soil is decreased or increased accord- 
ing to inexorable laws With each crop that is taken- 
from a plot of ground a greater or less amount of each of 
the elements of fertility — silex, poiash, lime, soda, mag- 
nesia, chlorine, etc., — is necessarily removed. Another 
portion is lost in the process of cultivation independently 
of what is taken up by the plants. Continue this process- 
