216 TRAVELS THROUGH NORTH AMERICA : 
are apt to wash away the seeds/ together with 
the mould on the surface. In Bottetourt 
County, on the contrary, the soil consists chiefly 
of a rich brown mould,- and throws up white 
clover spontaneously. To have a rich meadow, 
it is only necessary to leave a piece of ground 
to the hand of nature for one year. Again, on 
the eastern side of the Blue Mountains, scarce¬ 
ly any limestone is to he met with ; on the op¬ 
posite one, a bed of it runs entirely through 
the country, so that by some it is emphatically 
called The Limestone Comity. In sinking 
wells, they have always to dig fifteen or twenty 
feet through a solid rock to get at the water. 
Another circumstance may also be mention¬ 
ed as making a material difference beween the 
country on one side of the Blue Ridge and 
that on the other, namely, that behind the 
mountains the weevil is unknown. The weevil 
is a small insect of the moth kind, which de¬ 
posits its eggs in the cavity of the grain, and 
particularly in that of wheat; and if the crops 
are stacked or laid up in the bam in sheaves, 
these eggs are there hatched, and the grain is 
in consequence totally destroyed. To guard 
against this, in the lower parts of Virginia, and 
the other states where the weevil is common, 
they always thresh out the grain as soon as the 
crops are brought in, and leave it in the chaff, 
which creates a degree of heat sufficient to de- 
