SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
267 
your plows have but two objects in view — the grass and 
the atmospher-e — plow to kill grass and plow to form feed- 
ing places for the food of the plants — for the gasses to be 
deposited are gasses that the air generates and which the 
roots take up. 
I have known experienced planters to cry down sub- 
soil plows and utterly dispense with them, and say that 
. they have tried them effectually and found them of no 
permanent avail. I have usually accounted for this upon 
the ground, that they subsoiled at the wrong season of 
the year. 
I take this position : — That the richer the land, the 
longer is the proportion of the nourishing gasses gener- 
ated in the ground, and vice versa. The air, therefore, 
will do a better part for rich than for poor land, and 
hence, with equal cu ture, the first will outproduce the 
latteff This being the fact, very high culture, or if you 
please scientific culture, may be dispensed with on rich 
land, with less comparative loss than in poor land. In 
otlier words, any sort of a planter can make good crops 
on rich, while it takes scientific farmers to succeed well 
on poor land. 
Now what have those to do who cultivate poor land 1 
They have to force the earth to do for them — or, rather, 
they have to force the atmosphere to do for their poor 
lands — what it is quite willing to do for land kept natur- 
ally porous I y foreign ingredients — that is, for rich land. 
Originally all land is the same. If, therefore, one 
soil differs from another the distinction is attribut- 
able to facticious ingredients — ingredients that may 
be called fertilizers. But why so called 7 In other words, 
why is rich land, containing, as it does, fertilizing ingre- 
dients, that distinguishes it from poor land — more pro- 
ductive than poor lands I Now, very many persons 
would say it was due, primarily, to the ingredients in 
the land. Not so. Not so by any means. -So to think 
is a capital error. . It is due to the atmosphere as the prior 
agent. Fertility comes to, and not from the ground. 
A man having rich land can have fertility carried to 
his land without much service upon his part. But whyl 
Because his land is prepared to receive it. His least cul- 
ture, the efore, will give him large results. His least 
culture will give the cause of the earth’s productiveness 
full opportunity to work its results, which cause is whol- 
ly atmospherical, i. e.: external to the ground. Why do 
poor lands produce much larger crops— other things be- 
ing equal — during wet, rather than during very dry sea- 
sons! The reason is, assuredly, not that any ingredients 
of a fertilizing character, have been added to the land, 
but because the gasses of the air have been enabled to do 
their office better. Wet weather befriends the atmos- 
phere — the gasses go to the roots and the roots more 
abundantly supply the plants. Let these suggestions be 
pondered. W. S Grayson. 
Benton, Miss., 1859. 
P. S — If fertility is not in, but comes to the land, it 
may be enquired, why does cultivation impoverish it! 
If fertility comes externally — that is to say, if the growth 
of crops is traceable to the gasses generated in the soil by 
the atmosphere — why does the soil under culture seem to 
lose its fertility ! The answer is plain. The cause of 
fertility, in my opinion, is gaseous or aerial— is of the na- 
ture of air. Hence, you may rarify fertility. Hence, by 
successive washings and dryings, without culture, you 
may impoverish the richest soil. ^ 
Cultivation evaporates or rarifies the feft-tility of land, 
'but it nbstacts none of the soil. Cultivation takes no 
ground from the land ; takes no(hiri£: that can be called 
soil; abstracts no earthy particles. It takes ingredients 
that belong to the aerial — that may be made gaseous — 
that may be evaporated. Land properly is insoluble and 
pulverable. 
The position fierein advocated may be easily tested. 
Select a piece of very poor land. Cover it so that the 
sun and rain cannot, while the atmosphere may, reach it, 
and then occasionally pulverize or make it porous. If, 
by this process, the land is fertilized, it follows that fer- 
tility is gaseous — silex, potash, lime, soda, magnesia, 
chlorine, &c., are partly insoluble and partly gaseous. It 
is the air in them that make them fertilizers. What is in- 
soluble is soil, but is not itself fertile. W. S. G. 
NIGHT soil.. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — W ill you or any of 
your contributors give me information through your 
columns, how to preserve and use Night Soil! As to 
how it is to be obtained I want no information, and as I 
am seriously asking for and seeking advice, perhaps a 
few words of advice to the owners of slaves may be of 
service to them. ^ 
Put up quite enough of privies — let them be convenient 
— have proper constructed boxes to be removed at least 
once a week — have the house well cleansed once a week, 
and, my word for it, you will be amply repaid in cleanli- 
ness and in health. Do this and you will never have to 
threaten a servant for failure to regularly visit them — 
your servant children 3 years old will regularly visit 
them. , 
This article, as a manure, must be superior to the 
Peruvian Guano or any other article. But how to use it is 
my inquiry! lam seeking information and earnestly 
seeking it; and I will remark that I do not think the free 
use of lime or charcoal will profit ; each in different ways 
will destroy the ammonia, which is very great, 
I desire to call the attention of planters and learned 
men to this subject. It is little understood. Twenty 
years ago if we had been told that Peruvian Guano, at 
one teaspoonful to the hill of corn, was more efficacious 
than one pint of cotton seed, we should have scouted the 
idea, and yeti am of the opinin that Night Soil has more 
fertilizing qualities in it than Peruvian Guano, All who 
shall reduce this subject to a science will, in my opinion, 
be a public benefactor ; at least he shall be deemed so by 
Your friend and obedient servant, 
Jas. Thomas. 
Hancock County, Ga., 1859. 
■ 9 m • 
AGRICULTURAL STATE FAIRS, FOR 1S59. 
Illinois, Freeport September 5, 9. 
United States, Chicago September 12, 17. 
Kentucky, Lexington September 13, 17. 
Vermont, Burlington September 13, 16. 
Western Virgina, Wheeling Island.. ..September 13, 19. 
New Jersey, Elizabeth September 13, 16. 
Maine, Augusta September 20, 23. 
California, Sacramento September 13, 22. 
Ohio, Zanesville September 20, 23. 
Nebraska, Nebraska City September 21, 23. 
Indiana, New Albany September 26, 30. 
St. Louis, (Mo.,) County Fair September 26, 30. 
Wisconsin, Milwaukee September 26, 30. 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia September 27, 30. 
Iowa, Oskaloosa September 27,30. 
Canada West, Kingston September 27, 30. 
Michigan, Detroit October 4, 7. 
New York, Albany October 7. 
New Hampshire, Dover, October 5, 7. 
Tennessee, Nashville October 5, 7. 
Georgia, Atlanta October 24, 28. 
Maryland, Frederick City October 25, 28.- 
Alabama, Montgomery November 15, 18. 
To do good to our enemies is to resemble the in- 
cense whose aroma perfumes the fire by which it is con- 
sumed. 
