158 
AGRICULTURE IN NORTH CAROLINA.-TO DESTROY THE BEE MOTH. 
nure, or more than two-thirds of its fertilizing virtue' 
will be lost to the farmer. For, as bone decom¬ 
poses, it gives out a large quantity of ammonia, an 1 
alkali so volatile as to be lost by evaporation, un¬ 
less combined with some material that will retain 
it, and charcoal will hold of this gas four hundred 
times its own bulk, giving it out to the plant as 
required. 
I would suggest to our farmers the folly of 
planting potatoes in any soil in which water cannot 
freely percolate, as stagnant water will inevitably 
ruin the product. Wm. Partridge. 
New York, April, 1846. 
AGRICULTURE TN NORTH CAROLINA. 
I promised to furnish your paper with an article 
treating of the system of agriculture pursued in the 
eastern section of North Carolina generally; and 
you have been pleased to ask me for one in relation 
to my own method of farming, particularly. Had I 
not promised to furnish something on the subject, I 
would now shrink from the task; for I know full 
well that I cannot impart any instruction or valu¬ 
able information in the description I should give of 
agriculture as it exists at present in our section of 
the country. I use the term exist in a passive sense, 
and in contradistinction to that in which I would 
use it were I residing in a country whose agricul¬ 
ture was in a flourishing or even progressive con¬ 
dition. But I grieve to say, that here, with some 
very few exceptions, our farmers are content to 
plod along the same slipshod, slovenly, wasteful 
course of impoverishing their lands, and themselves, 
which reduced those who formerly owned the 
lands either to beggary or emigration. So univer¬ 
sal has been the bad management in the eastern 
section of North Carolina (and I may with truth in¬ 
clude the same sections in Virginia, South Carolina, 
and Georgia) on the part of planters, that an estate 
is now seldom owned by two generations of the 
same name or family. Nor is this the least melan¬ 
choly reflection arising from a view of this picture; 
for with the extinction of ownership to the land by 
children of its former proprietor, there soon follows 
the extinction of his family or name; poverty, 
death, or emigration, to distant lands; in a few 
years effacing well-nigh from the memory of those 
who are left behind, that such persons ever dwelt in 
their neighborhood. You will naturally ask, is 
there not some special cause at work to produce 
such melancholy results, and if so, is there not a 
remedy to check its further progress ? 
My own decided belief is,.that the primary cause 
is attributable to the gross ignorance and neglect of 
those to whom the proprietors have hitherto con¬ 
fided the management of their estates. I mean our 
overseers or managers; and that our remedy con¬ 
sists in an entire remodelling of the old system. 
This you will readily understand when I state the 
following case, as a fair sample of the management 
of a Southern plantation. Mr. A. becomes pos¬ 
sessed of a tract of very fair land, say 1,250 acres, 
valued at $15,000, of which from 800 to 900 acres 
are cleared; he also owns some 25 working hands 
(old and young inclusive), which, with his stock, 
farming tools, &c., &c., cost him some $15,000 
more. Here, then, is a capital of some $30,000, 
invested in a plantation, as it is termed. What is 
the first thing that he does? Why, to hire an 
overseer, that is, a white man to live oh his planta¬ 
tion, manage his negroes, and “ make a crop.” 
Whom does he select for such a purpose ? Why, 
generally speaking, some young man in the neigh¬ 
borhood, who is too indolent himself to work for a 
support, but is ready to make others work for it— 
perfectly and thoroughly ignorant of everything re¬ 
lating to agriculture, or anything else, with the ex¬ 
ception that he has occasionally taken hold of a 
thing called a plow, drawn by one horse, and 
which he skims over the surface of the ground, or 
mayhap scratches it to the depth of one or two 
inches—has probably dropped corn here and there, 
over this surface, and covered it sometimes with a 
clod and sometimes not at all; and then afterwards 
gone through his corn rows or whatever they may 
be, three or four times each with the plow and hoe 
—and this he calls planting and “ tending the 
crop.” He may have “ farmed” it this way in an 
effort to “ raise” corn, wheat, cotton, tobacco, &c., 
either on his own account or that of one of his 
neighbors, who were short-handed, and hired him 
for the purpose at different periods of the youth’s 
“ growing up.” He probably may have been to 
school long enough to have learned how to read, 
and, with prodigious effort, to write, and go through 
a simple sum of addition, multiplication, and subtrac¬ 
tion ; but even without these accomplishments he 
considers himself properly qualified to manage your 
farm, or, as it is called, “ carry on your business.” 
He receives, as a salary, from $150 to $350 per 
annum; his provisions are found him by his em¬ 
ployer, that is, a sufficiency of pork, or bacon and 
meal, the use of a cow, a horse to ride over the 
plantation, a house to live in, and a woman to cook 
and wash for him, &c. Generally speaking, there¬ 
fore, excepting a small deduction for their clothes, 
they spend very little of their salary. 
Now it is scarcely worth my while to say any¬ 
thing in relation to the system of farming carried on 
under such auspices ! Would not any mercantile 
establishment in New York or London, however 
vast its resources, soon explode, if the management 
of its affairs were entrusted to one so little versed 
in his business, as this overseer palpably must be in 
that which he presides over ? Can any one wonder 
now at the picture I have presented, when the first 
object the eye rests upon is this odious deformity ? 
Should you desire it I will finish the landscape at a 
subsequent period. Excuse this hastily written 
scrawl—the truth is I take no pleasure in the re¬ 
cital. . T. POLLOK BURGUYN. 
Ravenswood , N. C. 
To destroy the Bee Moth, —A correspondent 
from - Winchester, Ohio, asks as to the best method 
of destroying the bee moth. There are various 
articles on this subject in the back volumes of the 
Agriculturist; but if any of our readers can furnish 
us additional succinct information on the preven¬ 
tion of the moth, we shall be glad to hear from 
them—as prevention is the great desideratum. There 
are various authors on the Bee, such as Bevan, 
Townley, &c., whose works may be had from 25 
to 50 cents each These all treat fully of the 
bee moth, and it would be scarcely fair for us to 
copy much from these authors. 
