THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
149 
Haviag disposed, for ihe present, ot the means 
necessary to prevent the land from washing, I 
will next invite the attention ot the farmers of 
Greenville to some suggestions for managing 
so as to exhaust our fields less, at the same time 
that we increase the amount of manure to carry 
bach to them, it see. us to be the general belief 
among the most important agriculturists, that 
the ripening ot the seedot our cultivated plants 
exhausts the soil much more than the produc- 
tion of the whole ol the vreen plant. For ex- 
ample, that two crops ot Clover or Oats led off 
in the bloom will not impair the fertility ot a gi- 
ven soil more than one crop of either when the 
seeds are all permitted to ripen. It is equally 
true, that when stock consumes the whole of a 
given crop, they make more manure than they 
would if only the ripe seed had been consumed. 
Had our tanners not best acton. These princi- 
ples, more than they have heretofore? If more 
grass and green crops were raised, could not as 
much stock as is now made, be produced with 
much less deterioration to our farms? The 
same amount of stock, full fed on green crops, 
would, it is believed, give as much manure as 
they do now, and therefore the difference must 
be in favor of sustaining, at least, if not impro- 
ving, the productiveness of our farms. But 
says one, this reasoning would do very well lor 
the grass country of Kentucky, but ihls climate 
does not suit grass. In reply I would say, the 
climate of Kentucky is about as much superior 
to ours for corn as it is for grass; and if we are 
to make no grass because it grows better in 
Kentucky, why, we had just as well quit raising 
corn, too. Much of the soil of Kentucky is ve- 
ry rich^ and is that much better for grass than 
ours; but in all the mountainous parts of this 
District, and the country sufficiently near the 
mountains to secure sufficient moisture, grass 
will grow as well as in any part of the world on 
soil of the same quality. It may not be as good 
for one month in the year, or the hay may not 
be as rich in nutriment as Haywood or Yancey 
in N. Carolina; but what I mean to say is, that 
one acre of good grass in the upper part of 
Greenville District, judiciously managed, will 
be worth as much in the course of the year, to 
maintain stock, as anywhere else; for if the 
pasture was less rich, it will last a great deal 
longer, and if the hay is less nutritious, the win- 
ter in which it is led is much milder, and ani- 
mals require a less nutritious food than where 
the weather is more severe. In addition to this, 
we have in the common corn field pea, of very 
great importance, a green crop, both for feeding 
green and cured, the benefit of which is denied 
by the climate to those countries where grass 
does better than with us. 
Farmers of Greenville, can’t you raise more 
stock than you do? can’t you do it, without 
feeding so much corn from your ciibs? Can’t 
you sat^more manure than you have been do- 
ins ? The true answers to these questions, and 
the proper practice based thereon, may not af- 
ford such general interest or excitement, as the 
news from Gen. Taylor’s camp ; nevertheless 
there is one, at least, thatconsiders them of more 
importance to the prosperity and happiness of 
the District, I love very much to hear the glo- 
rious news from the Rio Grande, but let us not 
in our patriotic exultations over the faithful 
performance of duly— hy our noble little army 
— forget or neglect our own. Agricola. 
From the American Agricnltutist, 
How to Sustain and Improve the (Quality 
of the Soil. 
It has become an important inqui-y among 
many of ourfarmers, how they shall fertilize such 
of their lands as are yielding large burthens of 
produce, which are taken off the premises for 
sale ? Where remote from a large city, or places 
for supplying manures, this is a most important 
query, and one which they are highly interested 
in having answered correctly. It is absolutely 
certain, that fanners eann-ot annually rob their 
farms of large crops of grain, grass and roofs, 
without either supplying manure to the soil, or 
losing rapidly in its fertility. We shall briefly 
indicate some of the most obvious resources for 
sustaining and improving the productiveness of 
the soil. 
In the first place, not an ounce of animal ma- 
nure should be suffered to be wasted, either li- 
quid or solid. When not dropped on the feeding 
grounds, but around the stables and yards, it 
should be carefully saved and treasured up, where 
it cannot waste till use 1. This should bt care- 
fully and judiciously compounded with turf, or 
peat, or vegetable matter, so as to retain all its 
gases, and not be permitted to drain away, and 
as soon as a proper time offers, it should be car- 
ried on to the fields and at once incorporated with 
the soil. Another resource for many of our 
Kastern farmers, is the immense stores of peat 
and muck that are within their reach, and which 
tends greatly to benefitting a light, sandy or 
loamy soil. All the animal matter, ashes, leach- 
ed or unleached, should be carefully collected 
and applied to their land, and any otner fertiliz- 
ing substance which is to be found around the 
premises or can be collected at not too great an 
expense in the neighborhood. 
But in many cases where the stock of cattle is 
not large, and the produce sold from the land is 
considerable, some more definite and certain 
means for sustaining a farm must be resorted to. 
With the most intelligent and systematic agri- 
culturists, a proper rotation is adopted, which 
has been found by experience, to be adapted to 
the locality and products. By this is meant, a 
regular succession of crops on the same field 
through a series of years, which at their expira- 
tion, are again repeated. They are so arranged 
that two grain crops never follow each other, but 
are separated by root crops, grass, &c. This 
system prevents the necessity of the soil yield- 
ing similar ingredients through two or more suc- 
cessive seasons, which it will .seldom do to an 
extent sufficient to produce a good second crop. 
Time is required for it to decompose such of the 
ingredients which it contains, as are necessary 
to form what are called the inorganic portions of 
the plant, in such conditions as to be taken up 
and appropriated by the plant. It also enables 
the cultivator to apply his green or putrescent 
manures to such crops as are most properly 
adapted to receive them. Such are corn and 
roots, and nearly all the objects of cultivation 
excepting the smaller grains. 
Thfi great object of rotation, however, is to 
give the land rest as it is termed, when allowed 
to remain in grass or meadow; or refreshment 
when clover or other fertilizing crops are plowed 
into the soil for manure. Such crops carry back 
to the soil so much of its materials as they have 
taken from it, and in addition, important ele- 
ments which they have abstracted from the at- 
mosphere ; and they are found by long practice, 
to be of great benefit in sustaining the fertility of 
the soil. Before passing on to a consideration 
connected with this particular point in the' sub- 
ject, of the highest importance, we would say, 
that a large shrre of the benefit to the land, de- 
rivable from this practice, may be secured, by 
feeding the clover to such animals as will con- 
sume it on the ground. We say a part only, for 
all the food which goes to supply the respiration 
of the animal, which is no inconsiderable share, 
passes off again into the air, and Is lost. Ano- 
ther part is stowed up in the augmented size of 
the animal, for it is certain that whatever weight 
it acquires while feeding, is at the expense of the 
soil. Tf milch cows are pastured, the abstrac- 
tion of valuable ingredients is still greater, as it 
has been found that pastures fed off for a long 
time by cows, have been robbed of large amounts 
of phosphate ot lime, and other important mat- 
ter. If horses are thus fed and taken on to the 
roads or elsesvherc to work, it is evident that 
large quantities of this manure will thus be lost 
to the fields supplying the food. 
Sheep are undoubtedly the best adapted to the 
object we have in view. They remain stationary 
in the same fields where they feed, and return to 
them all they have taken, save what escapes by 
respiration, evaporation, or is stored up by the 
wool or carcass. They also drop their manure 
on the highest an.d driest parts of the ground, 
where it is more beneficial than elsewhere ; and 
we would most earnestly recommend the intro- 
duction of sheep husbandry on a more or less 
extended scale, to any farmer who practices the 
system ot turningin crops for manure. The ne- 
cessity of carrying them through the winter, 
will still further provide the materials for fertili- 
zation, by accumulating a store of manure from 
this source, which, without the sheep or a full 
equivalent in other stock, would not be thus se- 
cured. 
But to recur to the subject of turning in green 
crops. It is evident at a single glance, that this 
system does not accomplish all that is necessary 
in sustaining the full measure of fertility ofland 
subject to close cropping. In a rotation consist- 
ing of clover and wheat simply, we find that the 
wheat abstracts large amounts of phosphate of 
lime, potash, gypsum, salt, &c., &c., which, if 
nothing be added to the soil, except the clover 
crop, will in a few years leduce any ordinary soil 
to so low a point, that it cannot yield profitable 
returns, ff'he land may continue to yield for a 
long time ; but it is evident that it is losing pro- 
perties at every successive harvest, which must 
be supplied to it, or it will eventually be exhaust- 
ed. 
The truea.id only remedy for this is, to ascer- 
tain by analysis, either of your own or the well 
estab'ished researches of others, precisely what 
of the inorganic materials, such as are inherent 
in the soil, and not found to any appreciable ex- 
tent in the atmosphere, are taken from the land 
by cropping or feeding, and not returned to it by 
straw, manure or offal of any kind, and return 
those materials to the land in such available 
shape as will enable future crops to supply them- 
selves with all they require. This is indispensa- 
ble to a succession of good crops and prolongs 
fertility, and no farmer is wise who neglects this 
practice for a single year, however seemingly 
well his adopted system may answer, which does 
not embrace the foregoing practice. 
From the Northern British Review, 
Rotation of Crops* 
It is better to prevent the special exhaustion 
we have been speaking of, than to cure it. — 
It is often difficult to discover what the land 
really requires, and therefore to cure the evil 
when it exists. The only method of preventing 
it, with which we are yet acquainted, is by the 
introduction of a skilful rotation or alternation of 
unlike crops. In adopting such a rotation, we 
only copy from nature. In the wild forest, 
many generations of broad-leaved trees live and 
die, and succeed each other; but the time comes 
at last, when a general pestilence seems to as- 
sail them all; their tops droop and wither, their 
branches fall off", their trunks rot. They die 
out, and a narrowed leaved race succeed them. 
This race again has its life of centuries, per- 
haps; but death seizes it too, and the expanded 
leaf of the beach, tbe ash and the oak, again 
cheer the eye— playing with the passing ze- 
phyrs and glittering in the sun. So in ihe broad 
meadow, the old pasture changes, and new 
races of humble grasses succeed to each other 
as the field increases in age. The alternati®n of 
crops, therefore, asserts to itself something of 
the dignity ot a natural law ; and man is evident- 
ly in the right course when he imitates nature 
in a procedure like this. But upon what do its 
good effects depend 1 Why do the broad leaved 
alternate with the narrow in the ancient forests? 
W hy do the grasses change in the old meadow ? 
Why does the farmer obtain a larger produce, 
and for a greater number of years, by growing 
unlike crops alternately, than by continuing 
year after year to grow the same ? The reason 
is not merely that one crop carries off more, and 
another less, of all those things which all oar 
crops derive from the soil, but that one cropcar- 
ries offmore of one thing, and another crop 
more of another. The grain carries off phos- 
phorous, the straw silica, the bulb alkaline mat- 
ter. 
After, perhaps, fifteen or twenty successive 
crops of the same kind, the surface soil through 
which the roots are spread becomes so poor in 
those substances, which the crop especially re- 
quires, that the plant cannot obtain from it a 
sufficient supply to nourish and bring to maturi- 
ty the full grown plant, within the time allotted 
to it in our climate for its natural growth. The 
roots do their best; they collect as diligently as 
they can, but winter comes on and the growth 
ends before the plant is fully matured. In the 
