THE CULTIVATOR. 
17 
has communicated to us his practice for the last four 
years, which he thinks has preserved his peas from their 
ravages. It is to stow away his peas, without threshing, 
till winter. The vitality of the insect is believed to be 
destroyed by this means, and of course the parent stock. 
A somewhat similar mode has been adopted, we under¬ 
stand, to smother and destroy the insect, by threshing 
them as soon as they are brought from the field, heading 
up the peas in perfectly tight barrels, and keeping them 
in this state till winter. 
Gypsum. —“ A young subscriber,” who dates from 
Virginia, would not be edified, and we fear our readers 
would not be benefited, by a philosophical disquisition 
of the question he submits to us. Opinions as to the 
modus operandi of gypsum are various. Even those 
who ought to know best are not agreed in the matter. 
Our opinion has been so often expressed in the Cultivator, 
that our correspondent will find no difficulty in gather¬ 
ing it from our volumes. See pages 80 vol. I. 7, 128, 
vol. III. 55, vol. IV. &c. 
Application of Lime. —“ N.” who dates at Locust 
Grove, is referred to pages 104, vol. I. 11, 54, 84, 100, 
116, 149. vol. III. See. for answers to his queries. We 
remark, however, that the first question to be consider¬ 
ed is, whether it is desired to have it operate as caustic 
or mild lime; that when applied to sod ground, it should 
be spread before the sod is turned over, in preference to 
being spread after ; and that it is seriously injured, as 
quick-lime by being long exposed, in heaps of “ two or 
three hundred bushels,” to the weather; and that if 
mild, or air slaked, it will probably receive little injury 
or benefit. 
John M. Millikin’s proposition. —We have received a 
printed sheet, containing a proposition of this gentleman, 
who resides in Butler county, Ohio, to raise a fund, by 
voluntary subscription, of $1,000, to be awarded in 1842, 
in three premiums of $500, $300 and $200, for the first, 
second and third best improved, cultivated and stocked 
farms in the county. Subscriptions to be received till 
January, 1840. We have not room for the details ; but 
we think the plan is a good one, and that if carried out 
with spirit, it will soon add thousands of dollars to the 
value of the agricultural products of Butler county. 
There is nothing like competition to accelerate improve¬ 
ment; and the more numerous the competitors, the more 
substantial the benefit. 
Sugar Beets. —Sherman McLean, of Royalton, Niaga¬ 
ra county, has raised 4001bs. of sugar beet seed—the 
roots appear still sound, and he asks if they will produce 
another crop of iSfeed if they are planted out 1 Our ans¬ 
wer is—they will not. 
Sugar Boilers. —We have received a subscription 
from Joseph P. Plummer, of Richmond, la. and his 
friends, on condition that we publish in our March num¬ 
ber, the best construction known to us for a furnace to 
boil “ sugar water.” We give, from perhaps the best su¬ 
gar boiler in the state, a description both of the furnace 
and boilers, in another column, under the title maple 
sugar, which we hope will prove satisfactory not only 
to our correspondent, but to many other of our readers. 
Smith’s Contracting and Expanding Cultivator —A 
drawing of which has been sent to us, possesses one 
property not common to any other implement of this 
name we have ever seen: It may be contracted or ex¬ 
panded at pleasure, while the team is in motion, by the 
man who guides it, merely by moving one of the han¬ 
dles to the right or left, which is connected by a half 
inch rod with a cast iron cog wheel, four inches in dia¬ 
meter, which works in two slides screwed to the slats. 
Nitre in Steeps.— -In reply to the inquiry of James 
Boyle, as to the quantity of salt petre we use in steeps 
for seed corn, &e. our practice has been to use half a 
pint of crude India salt petre to a half bushel of seed. 
Less would suffice, and more would not prove injurious. 
We dissolve the nitre in water, and then apply it to the 
grain. 
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. We 
have received sixteen pages of manuscript, in part of an 
answer to the communication of our New-Hampshire 
correspondent, in relation to common school libraries. 
They came to hand too late for this number, but will 
be inserted in our next. 
O 3 We thank our Correspondents, 
For the valuable communications with which they 
have enabled us to enrich the columns of this number of 
our paper, and to render it as valuable, in original mat¬ 
ter, probably, as any number we have published. Our 
communications exceed thirty in number ; and, zealous 
as we feel in agricultural improvement, it seems to us, 
that some one ol them may be made to benefit every 
subscriber to the amount of his annual subscription. 
The very excellent communication of Mr. Seeley cannot 
fail greatly to benefit every farmer who has a peat 
swamp, and is desirous to profit by it. The letter of 
Mr. Garnett, besides abounding in other useful matter, 
will furnish useful hints to our northern as well as south¬ 
ern patrons, who would mind their habits and their prae 
tice. The articles upon corn crops, the culture of the car¬ 
rot and ruta baga, are replete with practical instruction. 
The communication of V.—and we are happy to add 
that our correspondent has promised a continuation ol' 
his favors—will be read with interest by all who are 
anxious to raise the standard of agricultural education. 
Indeed, we believe all the mass of matter inserted un¬ 
der “ correspondence,” will be found promotive of the 
great interests of agriculture and education. 
And we beg leave to call the attention of sugar-boilers 
to the notice, under maple sugar, of the excellent mode 
of management adopted by an eminent sugar-boiler of 
Jefferson county; and also, of our readers generally, to 
the reports made in the State Agricultural Society and 
in the Agricultural Convention. 
We are drawing out a vast deal of practical know¬ 
ledge, from the richest sources in our country, calculat¬ 
ed greatly to profit thousands, tens of thousands, nay 
millions, of American farmers—if they will but read, 
reflect and i mitate. __ 
Acknowledgments. —Three very beautiful apples, but 
not so rich in flavor as some of our old favorite varieties, 
from an unknown friend, the letter accompanying them 
having been lost; seeds of the Bayberry, Santafee wheat, 
and a new variety of corn, from Major Soulard, of Gale¬ 
na, from plants grown in the Ma jor’s garden, some of the 
wheat produced fourteen heads, beside the central one, 
upon a single stalk. We hope the opinion that this 
wheat will prove valuable, may be confirmed—un¬ 
known seeds from Culumbus, Ohio, and from Mr. 
Hathaway, Rome, seeds of the “ golden squash of 
France,” described as splendid in appearance, fine in 
flavor, and of very large size, brought from the garden 
of the banker Rothschild, at Paris, in 1837. Mr. H. has 
grown them one year. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
On Alternating Crops and the Causes of Deteri¬ 
oration in Virginia Lands. 
December 1st, 1838. 
Dear Sir—I have very often had occasion fo remark, 
that the man who ventures to make even one speech in 
public, has generally to make two or three more, by Avay 
of explanation; and so it is by writing. But whether 
this be owing to the imperfection oflanguage, or to the 
great carelessness of most of us in studying it, is foreign 
to my present purpose,—which is to explain, (if I can,) 
some things in my last letter, which you seem to have 
misunderstood. First, however, let me assure you, my 
good sir, in your own language, that no “ spirit of contro¬ 
versy” actuates me; my sole object being to elicit truth 
in regard to a matter highly important to all our agri¬ 
cultural brethren. 
You have gratified me much by expressing the belief, 
that “ were our views mutually understood, there would 
be found to be no great matter of difference between 
us;” and it is the hope of making that difference still 
less, which induces me to address you a second time, on 
the subject of “ Rotation of Crops.” 
I certainly had no intention to undervalue, and still 
less to condemn the practice altogether. My design was 
merely to prove, that its advantages had been most ex¬ 
travagantly exaggerated by imaginative and theorizing 
writers, who often mistake their own fancies for facts, 
and thereby have done real injury to our cause, when 
they meant to do good. To guard against misconstruc¬ 
tion, I declared my belief that “the best system of hus¬ 
bandry is inseparably connected with, and dependant upon 
both the rotation of crops and manuring ; but chiefly the 
latter.” When, therefore, I stated numerous instances 
of good and apparently equal crops of the same or simi¬ 
lar kinds, having been made on the same land, for a long 
term of years, in uninterrupted succession;—some with 
manure, but others entirely without it; I did not antici¬ 
pate the possibility of appearing, either to yourself or 
others, to contradict myself. I meant no more than to 
prove that the rotation doctrine had been extended much 
too far by its chief advocates, who had thus produced 
doubts rather than conviction of its real advantages; 
for surely if it can be violated in very many instances, 
for half a century, (as you yourself have admitted,) 
without any discernable injury, the truth of the asser¬ 
tion, that destructive injury takes place notwithstanding, 
is not yet quite as clearly demonstrated as the fact that 
“the sun shines daily,” which was all I meant by my 
objection to your apparently universal rule. As such, 
I could not admit it; neither could I receive it as any 
thing more than a conjecture, not sufficiently sustained 
by actual experiments. 
One of my exceptions to the universality of the 
rotation doctrine, (for I have never questioned its gene¬ 
ral utility,) was, the constant succession, for many years, 
of corn and oats in two of the largest counties of Vir¬ 
ginia, without apparent injury to the land. To this you 
answer, “ are corn and oats the same crop ?” as if I had 
actually called them so; whereas, I called them only 
“ white crops the constant succession of which, on the 
same land, is forbid by the rotation doctrine. “Besides,” 
(say you) “the pea, the bean, or the vetch, which al¬ 
ways” (not always, but generally,) “accompanies the 
oat, and which is turned in as food for the corn— is this 
nothing 1” My letter gave the answer in anticipation, 
for it states that the inhabitants of those counties as¬ 
cribed the preservation of their lands to the turning un¬ 
der of this natural growth. This you seem to admit, 
for you ask “ is not this virtually a three coursed sys¬ 
tem!” I have not denied it. But if so simple a pro¬ 
cess, forced upon men by their Maker, can prevent the 
fertility of an extensive territory from wearing out, may 
not some small indulgence be extended towards the scep¬ 
ticism of those who regard the complicated rotation of 
crops generally prescribed in our books, as a sort of 
“ king-over-all,” for exhausted lands, pretty much in the 
same light that they do the innumerable recipes in our 
old books on farriery, which rarely consisted of less 
than ten or a dozen ingredients, to cure a horse, even of 
the belly-ache, when not more than one or two of them 
perhaps, were worth a straw. Some medicine I believe 
to be quite as necessary for sick land, as for sick horses ; 
but for both I am persuaded, the more simple the re¬ 
storatives are, the better; and in the case of land that ma¬ 
nured without any rotation whatever, is incalculably bet¬ 
ter, (if they must be separated,) than any rotation ever 
yet devised by man, can possibly be, without manure; 
although I again repeat that I deem it best to use both. 
Among the proofs I adduced in support of my objec¬ 
tion to your doctrine, as I, at first, understood it— that 
upon which I most relied, was, the apparently equal 
crops of corn after corn, for a long term of years, with¬ 
out any intervening crop whatever, and without manure 
of any kind. To rebut these facts, you offer only the 
general conjecture, that a soil may contain so much of 
the specific food, either of wheat, corn, tobacco, &c. as 
to last apparently, without diminution, for “ forty or fif¬ 
ty years.” I asked no more to verify the inferences 
drawn from the facts which I stated; and this assurance 
I hope will, in a great degree, excuse my dissent from a 
rule, which you appeared to lay down as universal, but 
which I am. now satisfied you intended to be understood 
as only general. In this sense, I am perfectly willing 
to understand and to treat it; notwithstanding you ap¬ 
pear to have treated my exceptions to it, made under a 
misunderstanding of your intention, as proofs of my un¬ 
qualified enmity to rotation crops of any kind. If / 
could misunderstand you, it is nothing remarkable that 
you should misunderstand me. Far, therefore, very far, 
am I from imputing to you any design to pervert my 
meaning; for I have full reliance on your justice, as well 
as on the sincerity of your wishes, to render every com¬ 
munication to your paper available to the advancement 
of our cause, so far as you can make it so, in accordance 
with the principles and notions which first prompted 
you to undertake that truly valuable work. In thus ex¬ 
pressing my cordial approbation, both of your purpose 
and of the means to which you resort for its accomplish¬ 
ment, I say no more than my feelings and judgment both 
prompt me to utter. But being personally a stranger to 
you, this declaration might possibly lead you to suspect, 
without my earnest assurance to the contrary, that I 
was attempting “ to feed you with soft corn,” in order to 
deprecate or to dilute criticism, should you think I de¬ 
serve it. True it is, that I have not quite so strong a 
fancy to provoke it as the valorous Don Quixotte had for 
attacking giants, and making an exterminating war 
against wind mills; but had I feared any severity of re¬ 
mark from your pen, I should have taken the wiser course 
to keep my scepticism to myself; well knowing that 
every editor of a public journal, who chooses to avail 
himself unfairly (as so many do,) of his position, may, 
in every controversy with others, award the victory to 
himself. But having no suspicion that you belong to that 
dextrous class who are always for playing the game 
of “ cross I win, pile you lose,” I shall proceed a few 
steps further in attempting to explain my former letter, 
with the hope of reasoning myself, if possible, from the 
suspicion of utter infidelity relative to the rotation doc¬ 
trine. 
The cases which I stated, of the same garden vegeta¬ 
bles, and of cotton appearing to produce equal annual 
crops, on the same land, for a long term of years, with¬ 
out any discernible deterioration, either of the soil or 
the crops, were cited to prove that this had been effect¬ 
ed without any alternate crop whatever, unless manure 
could be called a crop and consequently demonstrated, 
in these cases at least, that the fertility of the lands and 
the equality of the crops had been maintained without 
rotation. 
The cases of corn and oats—both “ white crops,” al¬ 
though not “ the same,” in constant succession, for a still 
longer period, and without the intervention of anything 
but the natural growth of the wild pea or bean, turned 
under before the corn was planted, were given also to 
prove, that at least half a century of such a course had 
been insufficient to produce any apparent diminution in 
the crops; and the inference I drew from these cases 
was, not that rotation was altogether worthless, but of 
less advantage than was generally claimed for it; since 
here again, it had been found unnecessary, for at least 
fifty years, throughout a very extensive territory, where 
the soil did not seem materially different from that of 
thousands of acres, in other parts of our State. It is 
true, that I did not call this “virtually a three course 
system;” but I expressly stated, that the inhabitants 
themselves ascribed the preservation of their lands to 
the ploughing under the wild bean or pea, between the 
crops of corn and oats. Admit they are right, and what 
does it prove? Why, that this very simple alternation 
answers quite as well as any of those very complicated 
and troublesome systems of rotation, with which our 
agricultural books abound, and by which I have never 
yet seen any land improved, unless some one or more of 
the crops Avhich constituted the course were returned to 
the land, instead of all being taken from it; and unless 
also, manure was plentifully used during each rotation. 
Apply this, in proper quantities, to any two crops what¬ 
ever, either the same or different; this which is to plants 
what the life blood is to the human body ; or make use of 
lime, gypsum, marl, or ashes, and my belief is, that we 
need not trouble ourselves much about any system of ro¬ 
tation whatever; although I repeat what I have said be¬ 
fore, that some I deem better than none. 
The cases of equal corn and tobacco crops, each an¬ 
nually made on the same ground, respectAely appropri¬ 
ated to each, with the same result of undiscernable de¬ 
terioration, and without manure of any kind, were pre¬ 
sented as a still more unequivocal proof that the loss of 
fertility does not occur in every case, as you seemed to 
