SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
131 
pact and much like a solid rock, as bibulous as growing 
plants, themselves ; so that a soil, recently so hard as to 
be nearly closed to all air and water, becomes by deep 
and perfect tillage, capable of drawing from the earth 
below and the air above, into the very mouths of hungry 
yet stationary plants, every element demanded by nature 
to yield the industrious husbandman a satisfactory har- 
vest. Nature loves the earnest and thoughtful cultivator 
who does his work in a masterly manner — crushing every 
lump of clay, and Dulverizing the ground to bring out all 
its hidden wealth, as if it were filled with particles or fine 
gold. 
Shallow plowing gives to the soil only a small capacity 
to hold water in rainy weather; and when this capacity 
is full and running over, as it has been during the rains 
of March and February just past, and still additional rains 
fell, sad indeed is the washing done to many a plowed 
field. The loose soil was like a bucket full of water 
which could hold no more. Upon this more rain, came in 
torrents, and started a flood where the ground was a little 
decending, which carried the li-ht mould loam, and deep- 
er soil as far as loosened by the plow, into the branch or 
river below. Horizontal plowing, and that of the deepest 
kind is needed to prevent injuries of this character. In 
sowing small grains and grass seeds, we have found a 
roller of much service, not only to compress the earth to 
the seed and enable it to take a firmer root, but to prevent 
surface water from collecting in rills, as it is too apt to do, 
where the plow or harrow was last used in cultivation. 
Too much pains to avoid the washing of tilled land can 
hardly be taken in the South. It is better to rest more 
surface, and do ri^hi all that is cultivated at all, than to 
scratch over a larger area to the serious damage of every 
half tilled field. Put a fair portion of the plantation down 
to the best sort of grasses for permanent pastures, and 
meadows. These will save much labor in pulling todder, 
will support muhs, horses, cattle, sheep, goats and hogs, 
cheaper than can be done in any other way. Perfect til- 
lage is an art which but few understand. It must be 
practiced every year, deeply and thoroughly, to bring the 
soil into the best physical and chemical condition. Sub 
soiling may injure one or more crops, while in the end it 
will deepen the rich earth full 100 per cent. A deep, rich 
soil can never be made in one or two years from a thin 
and poor one ; but time and skill will attain the great ob- 
ject sought. L. 
THE LOW PRICE OF LAND AT THE SOUTH — 
Its Cause and Remedy. 
It is a humiliating fact that, in no part of Christendom 
in which there is a settled popu ation and in which there 
is a good government, does landed estate bear *!0 con- 
temptible a value as in the plantation States of America. 
The enclosed lands of the State of Georgia, for instance, 
rate at an average of less than five dollars an acre. The 
whole area of the State consists of about thirty-seven mil- 
millions of acres ; these are valued at ninety-five millions 
of dollars. The lands ot New York, which is a smaller 
State than Georgia, are valued at five hundred and fifty 
millions— nearly six times the value of the greater breadth 
of Georgia land. 
A Pennsylvania paper gives the amount of sales of some 
fifty farms in Bucks county, in 1S58. A considerable 
portion of them sold for more than ;S150 per acre— the 
larger number for more than SlOO per acre. The same 
paper (the Bvcks ('ounty Intelligencer) estimates the ad- 
vance in the price ot land in Bucks county alone, at more 
than four millions of dollars, in 1858. 
Throughout the Middle and Northern States, the aver- 
age price of land is perhaps five or six times as great as 
the price of land of equal original quality at the South 
In those countries in Europe in a high state of cultiva- 
tion, the average price of land is not less than S500 per 
acre. 
The owner of an average plantation of one thousand 
acres in Georgia is worth, as to his landed estate, say five 
thousand dollars. If he could sell his land for as much as 
the same quantity of land could be sold for in many por- 
tion'' of the Northern States, he would receive for it more 
than one hundred thousand dollars, and in Europe five 
hundred thousand dollars. 
This is an immense difference. With a given number 
of acres of land in one position, the owner is comparative- 
ly a poor man — in another he he is a a man of large for- 
tune. This difference occurs not from accidental causes, 
as proximity to large towns, &c , but in the value of the 
same quality of land for strictly Agricultural uses. 
There must be a cause for this difference. What is it 1 
As we are an agricultural people, and as a very large pro- 
portion of our property consists of land, it is obvious that 
there can be to us no question of greater pecuniary inter- 
est, than an inquiry into the cause of the low price of our 
landed property. 
It is remarkable that so little attention has been direct- 
ed to this point. Elaborate and able inquiries aie made 
into the effect of certain causes upon the price of cotton, 
or upon the value of our investments in stocks We do 
not recollect ever to have met with in reading, or heard 
in public speaking, an extended enquiry into the cause of 
the ruinously low price of land at the South, A share in 
a Bank or Railroad is worth as much in Georgia ks in 
New York. The same is true of a well blooded horse or 
cow, or sheep or hog. A bale of cotton is worth as much 
here as there, less the freight. But an acre of land is 
worth five or six times more there than here. And no 
one asks, “why V’ 
We propose to examine this question carefully. We be- 
lieve that in the partial attention which has been given to 
it, false causes have been assigned for ihe result under con- 
sideration and, that under the influence of this false caus- 
ation, the Southern mind has been misled, and its ener- 
gies perverted, or wasted or wrongly directed. 
If it shall be in our power to point out the real cause 
of the depreciated value of our lands, and suggest a prac- 
ticable method of bringing them up to the value at which 
land is held elsewhere, and if the South Countryman 
should have exhausted itselfin this effort, and not another 
of its pages ever be issued from the press, it will not have 
lived in vain. The inquiry is not new to us. We have 
pondered it for years. When in foreign lands we have 
passed through small estates, and on asking their value 
have received a re,^ly, conveying an almost fabulous 
amount, ; when the same result has occurred at the North, 
but with a diminished, yet great comparative value; in both 
these positions we have thought of our sunny land, upon 
which Providence has smiled with an affluence of favors 
beyond any other land, and have lamented that even the 
marhes of Holland, the furze covered Downs of England, 
the precipitous sides ot Ben Lomond, the sands of Cape 
Cod, the rocky pastures ol Connecticut, bear a higher 
value than the soil of Georgia. 
In the conduct of this inquiry, we shall in the first in- 
stance point out the the erroneous causes usually assigned 
for the low value of landed property at the South. 
Prominent among these false causes, is the abundance 
of cheap and fertile land at the West. This cause must 
indeed produce a certain degree of effect; but it cannot be 
the material cause; ifit were, the same result would fol- 
low at the North. The North-West has been settled chief- 
ly from the Middle and Northern States Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, and the rest have been thus populated. But land 
in the older Northern States has not been dimini.-hed in 
value— on the contrary, it has been steadily rising in 
value. It is easier to reach cheap and rich government 
jands from the Northern States than it is to reach the 
