60 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
DEARNESS OF LABOR—EFFCTS OF PLASTER OF 
PARIS OR GYPSUM—IRRIGATION. 
That land in Europe produces more, acre for acre, 
than in this country, whether under the plow or laid 
down to grass, is not to be attributed to the principles of 
productiveness being there better understood than here, 
but chiefly to the want of capital and the dearness of ag¬ 
ricultural labor in America. Is there any country where 
proprietors possess so little means of improving land in 
proportion to the land they own, as in ours? Many in 
the southern states, owners of hundreds of acres, have not 
money enough to buy a new saddle; resembling in their 
condition, that of a man who may be supposed to perish 
with cold in the midst of a forest, for want of a spark of 
fire, or a steel and flint to strike one. Hence the great 
value of labor saving machinery in our country; and as 
necessity has been aptly called the mother of invention, 
no country has displayed so much ingenuity as ours in the 
invention of contrivances to economise labor. 
Far from being behind hand in the art of agricultu¬ 
ral improvement, no people on the globe excel us in 
agricultural knowledge; nor has any made greater im¬ 
provement in comparison with the labor at the command 
of the farmer. Every one understands for example, the 
paramount importance of increasing his pile of manure; 
but in no one thing is the dearness of labor so much felt 
as in the quantity of it which is required to collect the 
materials for manure, and to haul out and distribute it 
after it is made. Herein consists the great value of gyp¬ 
sum on lands to which it is congenial; for on some, as 
for instance on the eastern shore of Virginia and Mary¬ 
land, owing perhaps to their alluvion soil or saline at¬ 
mosphere, or to both, it is said to have but little effect; 
while in other parts of both these states, its effect is ab¬ 
solutely magical. The very small quantity required—a 
bushel to the acre—and the quickness,with which it is 
applied, has arrested the progress of exhaustion in some 
of the counties, which, before it was introduced, were on 
the hig*h road to ruin. In some other respects its effects 
have been remarkable. It has been the cause, in Prince 
George’s county for example, of increasing the posses¬ 
sions and fortune of land holders, and diminishing the 
aggregatepopulation. The rapidity with which large bo¬ 
dies of the poorest could be converted into tobacco land, 
yielding 1,000 weight to the acre, the high price of that 
article, and the improvements in the implements and 
modes of culture, by which planters have come to make 
four or five hogsheads “ to the hand,” enabled the enter¬ 
prising land proprietor and slave owner, to make his 
land, purchased on time, pay for itself. Thus, small pro¬ 
prietors of land, owning few or no slaves, were bought 
out, and moved away to the west large estates have 
been accumulated by individuals, while the actual popu¬ 
lation of that eounty, perhaps the most productive in the 
state, and within striking of Baltimore, with its popu¬ 
lation of 100,000 inhabitants, and bordering on the cities 
of the District of Columbia, has diminished from 20,216 
in 1820, to 19,539 in 1840. 
The following are among many similar cases to show 
the operation of the influences to which I have referred; 
the facts are stated on indubitable authority. The late 
Governor Robert Bowie, a man of singular energy of 
character and of the highest moral worth, at the time and 
under the state of things already referred to, purchased 
two hundred acres of poor “broom sedge land” for 
$1400. He put half of it in corn, and probably gathered 
not more than 10 or 15 bushels to the acre; sowed it 
down to oats the next spring, and on them sowed clover 
and plaster of Paris or gypsum. Plastered the clover the 
succeeding spring, and the spring following planted in 
tobacco, and sold from it 100,000 weight at $10 per hun¬ 
dred; making $10,000 for half of the land, which three 
years before he had purchased, probably “ on time,” for 
$1400! Many similar inslances might be given of the 
effects of plaster of Paris in producing all the results I 
have stated, but I am wandering from my subject. 
Much and effectively as our ingenuity has been taxed 
in the invention of every expedient to save labor, it seems 
tome that there is one means of augmenting our crops of 
grass in a manner as wonderful or at least as great as the 
effect of plaster of Paris on cultivated crops—which is 
much practiced in some parts of Europe, but strangely 
neglected in a country, where of all others, circumstan¬ 
ces invite the use of it— I mean Irrigation. 
You, Mr. Editor, would render an essential service to 
American Husbandry, if you would yourself give, lor 
prevail upon some one to give an essay on that subject; 
especially, if you have at your command, so far, the kind 
offices of some correspondent who has seen the manner 
in which irrigation is conducted in Europe. I know a 
great man who could do it, but the game would hardly 
be worthy of the falcon. If I had time, I would collect 
the materials and digest such an essay, were it only for 
the benefit of a few friends who have all the resources for 
irrigation at command. I. S. S. 
Washington, Jan. 1, 1844. 
« CLIMATE and PRODUCTIONS OF THE SOUTH.” 
Messrs. Gaylord & Tucker —A more cooly imper¬ 
tinent defence or rather attack, than that of the “ Edi¬ 
tor or the Farmer’s Encyclopedia,” who is he?) I 
have never before met with. He dares undertake to cut 
down and fill up such a work as Johnston’s Encyclopedia, 
to “ adapt it to general circulation” in this country, and 
admits such an article as the one in question—a perfect 
mass of false statements, and calculated, if allowed to go 
uncontradicted, to do decided injury to the interests of 
the South—and when those directly interested, point out 
the falsehoods, he turns round and tells us, “ he did not 
write the article, but that a Southern man, born and edu¬ 
cated in South Carolina, did write it,” and therefore it 
should be received as gospel! A precious specimen of 
a Southern man he must be! Assuredly not a Southern 
man with Southern principles. For my part I cannot 
believe that the writer of it was ever south of Mason & 
Dixon’s line. “ The author is abundantly capable of 
taking care of himself, should he feel called upon to do 
so.” He is, eh? Well, if he does not feel himself call¬ 
ed upon to do so, when told again and again, that his 
data are almost invariably incorrect, and most of his 
statements untrue, he must be made of strange stuff for 
so bold a writer. I do not myself believe that “ he will 
condescend to notice” the corrections that have been 
made of his ingenious data, because no man is capable o 
sustaining them. If he thinks he is, let him try. As to 
the Editor in question, his “ explicitly stating from 
whence the article was taken,” does not clear him of 
being suspected of a desire to do the South injustice; he 
has foisted a mass of false statements upon the public, 
and given it weight and shelter, by doing so under the 
wing of a work of superior character. His defence is 
not calculated to aid in the circulation of his edition in 
the South. 
NUT GRASS OR COCO. 
A correspondent dating from Kingston, N. C., is desi¬ 
rous of knowing how to destroy Nut Grass. By this I 
presume he means Sweet Coco. If the Bitter Coco, which 
is ruining some of the finest lands on the Mississippi, 
and spreading rapidly through the interior, I know no 
means of destroying or even checking it. But if it be 
the first named, which is dug up by the children for its 
nut-like root, it can be destroyed; not without much la¬ 
bor, however. Let your correspondent continue during 
one entire summer, to cut it up before going* to seed, ta¬ 
king care to go deep enough to bring it away below Its 
tuft of fibrous roots, which branch offat about half an inch 
below the surface, and the nuts will die. If the ground 
is already full of seed, it will require more than one year 
to destroy it. It is a troublesome grass, but a mere trifle 
to its cousin, the Bitter Coco. 
RAT PROOF CELLAR. 
The method adopted by your correspondent A. B. N., 
for keeping moles out of his garden, will also suffice to 
keep rats out of a cellar; they will dig down under the 
wall of a house, to a considerable distance in a straight 
line, but will not attempt to go round an abutment at the 
base or L. Yours, Thomas Affleck. 
Ingleside, Adams co., Miss., Nov. 30, 1843. 
Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues 
