204 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
ed by peas and wheat. In 1855, the wheat is cut short by 
ihe drouth, but from what we saw we think it safe to esti- 
mate that a in a fair season it would have made twenty- 
five bushels per acre. 
The land Mr. Matthews called stiff, but we who have 
STIFF land thought it a light soil — clay, with a fair admix- 
ture of sand. It had been previously owned by the Messrs. 
Haxall, and had never been limed by them. Nor has Mr. 
Matthews applied to it any other manure than what the 
^^eas themselves have furnished. 
Tut, whether with or without lime, it is remarkable that 
six successive crops should have been removed from the 
land not only without any diminution of fertility, but with 
-a rapidly progressive improvement. 
Whether this mode of cropping can be judiciously ap- 
fjlied to all lands, we cannot say. We know from our 
own experiments, at Shadwell, and from the report of Mr. 
INoland’s experiments at Rox, that it would not suit the 
:south west mountain lands or the dry creek lands, gener- 
ally thought the best of that region in igA.lbemarle, and we 
doubt whether it would be proper in any lands that are 
already saturated with vegetable matter. Nor can we ven- 
tture an opinion as to the time at which this rotation will 
< cease to improve the land or the crop. But we are in- 
■ clined to the belief that it wall only produce more speedily 
that-exhaustion in the product of wheat which we have 
Been laughed at for maintaining as a consequence of the 
repeated suscession of the clover crop. 
We prefer now not to encumber the statement of what 
appears to us as a very remarkable fact with any theory 
as to the operation of peas as a fertilizer, or the duration 
af the fertility they produce. 
There are not facts enough known, or if known, they 
are perhaps not yet so systematized as. to authorize any- 
thing of the kind. But if a few of our friends choose, 
they can, in few years, by pi’oper experiments, throw a 
great deal of light on this subject; and it is very evident 
that such experiments can be conducted for six or eight 
years without the loss of a cent, either in time or trouble. 
In looking at the statement of Mr. Matthews’ course of 
<cropping, it will strike the reader as singular that whereas 
after the first crop of peas, twelve and a half bushels only 
of wheat was made, after the corn crop which followed 
that wheat, sixteen bushels was made . — Southern Planter. 
©AILS ASfD GULLIES--WASKING OE HILL SIDES- 
DEEP PLOWING AND HORIZONTAL 
DITCHING. 
We find the following very sensible article in the Madi- 
son Faviily Visitor : 
There are three things which exert a very controlling 
influence upon the Agriculture of Middle Georgia : its 
hiliiness, the predominance of clay in its soil, and the 
want of uniformity in its climate, as exhibited in the ter- 
.xible rains of spring and autumn, and the long, hotdrouths 
of summer. From a defective system of cultivation, not 
adapted to counteract the evils consequent upon these, that 
portion of the State has been changed from a very fruitful 
to a barren district, scarcely repaying the husbandman for 
his labor. Can the process of deterioration be arrested 
now, and can our lands be renovated in a manner which 
shall be practicable on a large scale! It is proposed to 
answer these questions by an examinetion of the three 
^tilings mentioned at the outset. 
First. The hilly nature of the country. This obviously 
affords great facilities for the washing aw’ay of the soil, 
and unless this be prevented by some means, it ^Jill with- 
out doubt, in a longer or shorter time, render the lands un- 
productive without the aid of any other impoverishing 
> cause. It is of the very first importance, therefore, that 
some steps should be taken to arrest this cause of deterior- 
ation, for unless it is successfully done, every step to- 
vrards improvement becomes more or less useless. Except 
on very steep hill sides, it can be done with great success 
by the following means : 
1st. By such a system of cropping and resting the land 
as shall always keep an abundance of the roots and other 
parts of plants distributed through the soil ; the small 
grain crops, from the great quantity of their fibrous roots, 
would produce this result in a most excellent manner, and 
should enter largely in toevery judicious system of rotation 
of crops. This is the plan adopted by nature in the’ woods, 
and it supceeds remarkably well there, for it is rare to see 
even the steepest hill sides in our forests furrowed by 
water. All are familiar also with the difference in the 
washing of two fields in the spring, which have been 
plowed alike in the winter, but one cropped the preceding 
year with cotton, the other with wheat. What also ex- 
empts fresh lands from washing but the numberless roots 
they contain ! 
2d. By deep plowing. During a slight shower of rain, 
water may run along a road, when not the slightest trace 
of its running can be seen in a field along side of it. Why 
is this ! Simply because, in the former the ground is 
packed so hard and tight that the water cannot penetrate 
readily between its particles, and hence accumulates on 
its surface; virhereas, in the latter the particles of the soil 
having been separated from each other by the plow, the 
water sinks readily between them as fast as it falls. If 
the soil be loosened to a depth of two or three inches only, 
however, during a hard rain it will soon penetrate to that 
depth, and meeting with a hard surface underneath simi- 
lar to that of the road, will accumulate upon it, and, if 
upon a slope may in time run down it and carry the soil 
away, (And to show that this is fully within bounds of 
probability, it may be stated that it is not a very uncom- 
mon thing for two and even three inches of water to fall 
during one rain in this region of country.) Now obvious- 
ly the greater the depth by which the soil is broken up, 
the larger the quantity of water which can be absorbed 
without a disposition to run down the hard surface under- 
neath, and the less the quantity which unsoaked up wull 
accumulate on the surface to run freely down its slopes. 
Every farmer is familiar with the fact that the clayey 
spots in his fields (which are more difficult to plow, and 
in consequence less perfectly broken up,) always wash 
the most readily. Is this due to the fact that clay is more 
readily acted upon by water than other kinds of soil ! 
By no means ; in itself it is perhaps the most tenacious 
and resisting of all — the washing is undoubtedly due to 
the circumstances mentioned, to wit : the shallow plow- 
ing. ^ . 
3d. By judicious hill side ditching. And here, as an 
offset to one of the most common objections to this plan — 
‘•'the ground it takes up,” — let me mention a fact which 
may afford a little consolation under the eircumstances. 
The hilly nature of the country, which causes the trouble 
We are considering, increases the absolute extent of its 
surface, the ai’ea of the sides and top of a hill being great- 
er than that of a level plain which could occupy the same 
situation, supposing the hill removed. For the same rea- 
son, obviously, that a road passing over the top of a 
mountain would measure longer than one tunneled 
through its base. Supposing a hill one hundeed yards 
long in every direction through its base, and twenty yards 
high in its middle, the excess of its surface over that of a 
plain would amount to one-eighth of an acre. It would 
seem, therefore, that we might allow a little space for 
ditches. Now as to their bearing on the point in question. 
When more water falls during a rain than can soak into 
the ground, it must run somewhere — hill side ditches can’t 
prevent that ; their object, however, is simply to modify 
the direction in which it shall run, and concomitant with 
this, the fall it shall have. The washing power of water 
