88 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
$l)e 0outl)ern ^ulttuatcrv. 
AUGUSTA, GA. 
VOff.. 111 ., I>0. 6 JUNE, 1845. 
To OUR Exchanges. — Many of the papers 
with which we exchange are still directed to 
us at Augusta, instead of Athens. Will those 
who have not already done so, attend to this, 
and oblige by directing to us at Athens, Ga,, 
in future? 
The Hessian Fly* 
The article in this paper, prepared for Mr. 
Ellsworth’s report, by Mr. Herrick, of Yale 
College, we cannot couamend too highly. Mr. 
H. is a gentleman distinguished for his habits 
of close and accurate investigation, and has de- 
voted a great deal of time and labor to the study 
of the origin, progress and modes of existence : 
of th is most destructive insect. It is to be hoped 
that the suggestion of Mr. Herrick, as to the 
best mode of exterminating it, will be univer- 
sally adopted. 
The Mind and the Soil of the South. 
The earnestness with which the minds of 
Southern men are beginning to be engaged in 
the improvement of the soil of the South, cer- 
tainly furnishes an occasion of very high grati- 
fication to every one who takes an interest in 
the welfare of the country. The proofs of this 
direction of the public mind are abundant, and 
are too strong to admit of mistake. We find 
them, in Virginia, in the establishment of a 
Stale Agricultural Society, with Edmund Ruf- 
fin as President, and a Vice-President for every 
congressional district in the State; and especial- 
ly in the very liberal support given by the pub- 
lic to the Southern Planter, published at Rich- 
mond by C. T. Botts. In North Carolina they 
are seen in the circulation of agricultural pa- 
pers and books among the people, and in the es- 
tablishment of an agricultural school under the 
care of Bishop Ives. In South Carolina we 
find them in the support given to two agricultu- 
ral papers, and the establishment of a State Ag- 
ricultural Society, with subordinate Societies 
in most of the districts of the State ; and in the 
very liberal provision made by the State for 
paying the expenses of agricultural and geolo- 
gical surveys. They are found in Alabama, in 
the establishment of a State Agricultural Soci- 
ety : and in Georgia, in the establishment of a 
9 State Society, with the Governor of the State at 
its head; in the increase of County Societies, 
in which our distinguished men are taking the 
lead, as Governor McDonald in Cobb county, 
and Judge Berrien in Chatham; and in the in- 
crease of the circulation of agricultural papers 
among the people in all parts of the State. And 
in this connection we cannot forbear to men- 
tion that the Chatham County Society has or- 
dered twenty -five copies of the Southern Cul- 
tivator for the use of its members; and that 
the Hon. Robert Toombs has ordered fifty co- 
pies for gratuitous distribution among his con- 
stituents. 
Feeding Plauts.— -Hill-?‘ide Ditches. 
Many persons there are, still living, who re- 
member that one of the great inducements peo- 
ple had to breakup their establishments in the 
settled parts of the country, and move to “ the 
purchase,” as the different acquisitions of terri- 
tory from the Indians, in Georgia and Alabama 
were called, was the excellent pasture lor cattle 
afforded by the forests. The great abundance 
and luxuriance of the wild grapes, and wild pea- 
vine, and cane, every where, in “ the purchase,” 
enabled the domestic animals of the first settlers 
to live and thrive with very little care from their 
owners. Many persons seemed to think that 
this state of things would last always. It seem- 
ed never to have occurred to them that as the 
purchase was filled up with settlers, and the for- 
ests with their cattle, these native pastures, rich 
and luxuriant as they certainly were, would be 
exhausted. It has so turned out, however ; and 
now, no man having any pretensions to thrift 
thinks of his cattle being able to provide lor 
themselves, as they did formerly. They have 
to be led from the products of the soil obtained 
by the labor and care of their owners. 
Precisely the same thing has happened with 
our crops. Plants are living bodies, and require 
food, as well as animals. When the country 
was first cleared up, plants lound in the soil an 
abundance of their appropriate food, which had 
been accumulating there forages. This was 
the golden age lor planters. Corn, cotton, 
wheat, rye, oats— indeed everything committed 
to the soil grew wonderfully, and produced most 
abundantly, requiring not much more care than 
did the cattle of those days ranging in the 
woods. Manure was not thought of, except as 
a nuisance to be gotten rid of. But from, con- 
tinual cultivation the food for plants, originally 
existing in the soil, has become exhausted, just 
as the food for cattle in the woods has become 
exhausted by continual grazing. New lands 
were cleared and treated in the same way, until 
there is very little more land to clear. And 
now, having consumed what nature had fur- 
nished, we are compelled to provide food for our 
plants with the same care and assiduity that is 
necessary in providing food for our cattle. 
The kind of food to be provided for animals 
— that which suits them best — is easily ascer- 
tained. Offer food that is improper, and it is 
rejected at once. Plants likewise have the pow- 
er of choosing to some extent; but we cannot 
see the exercise of this faculty, as in the other 
case. No one would think of feeding his hogs 
with hay, or his horse with pork. But it is not 
so easy a matter to ascertain what kind of food 
best suits different plants. Let a practical plan- 
ter set about finding out, and it will take a year 
to make an experiment ; on wheat, for instance : 
and even after the experiment shall have been 
made, he will, most likely, be as much in the 
dark as before it was begun. If he put an abun- 
dance of stable manure on his land, he may 
find his wheat prosper wonderfully, perhaps, du- 
ring winter and spring; but when earing lime 
comes, disappointment may come with it. The 
wheal that promised so well, may either run up 
to straw, and have few grains in the head, r' 
the straw, from weakness, may not be able t 
sustain the head, or the whole field may be 
stricken with the rust. Now the planter may 
suspect that his wheat has been fed with impro- 
perfood. But how is he to ascertain that? By 
making another experiment, and using another 
kind of manure. This will require another 
year, and, perhaps, result as the other did, in 
disappointment. To avoid all this trouble and 
vexation, he must call in the aid of science. — 
That kind of knowledge, which has been so 
contemptuously called book knowledge, is the 
only thing that can remove the difficulty. Sci- 
ence tells us what wheat is made of — grain as 
well as straw — that nature, to make one perfect 
wheat plant, uses no less than fourteen distinct 
elementary substances; and farther, that unless 
the plant can find certain ingredients of grain 
and straw in the soil, we must supply them to 
the soil before we can expect our wheat crop to 
prosper. "Whether they are already in the soil 
must likewise be determined by science ; and 
what kind of manure contains them in a state 
and quantity most suitable for the digestive or- 
gans of wheat, can be determined in no other 
way so well as by calling on science for the in- 
formation. 
To this point— providing food for plants— a 
very large portion of The Cultivator has been 
devoted, because it is an essential one. All 
real improvement must begin with it. The 
manner of applying this food properly, after it 
has been provided, is the next important point. 
On this, as on the other, our paper has contain- 
ed a great deal of very useful information. But 
there is still a third — the best way to prevent the 
unnecessary waste of this food when it shall be 
applied — about which we have not yet publish- 
ed much, except as to one branch of it, and 
that is subsoil plowing. Enough has been said 
to arouse the public mind to the importance of 
that operation. But how prevent its waste, in 
this hot climate, by the influence of sunshine 
and rain, and also from our plants gorging them- 
selves with it? Mr, Ruffin has divulged that 
secret, in his “ Essay on Calcareous Manures.” 
Where the soil is sandy, clay must be added ; 
and sand to a soil too stiff from clay. But the 
great remedy is lime. This must be an ingre- 
dient in all good soils. It gives consistency to 
sand and makes clay friable. But the all im- 
portant agency exercised by it, according to Mr. 
Ruffin’s II eory, consists iu this;— that it fixes 
manure in the soil ; just as, in dying, the mor- 
dant fixes the color in cloth; thus restraining 
the influence of the sun and rain in dissipating 
it, and so modifying and restraining the action 
of plants as to prevent them from gorging them- 
selves with food, and bringing on a diseased 
action of their organs. 
After all our labor to provide food |for our 
