AGRICULTURE.

A number of the most distinguished gentlemen in Virginia have recently established an Agricultural Society. The zeal with which the individuals appear to be animated, and the practical knowledge displayed in their papers, bid fair to produce important results. We are indebted to a friend for the following copy of a communication from Col. JOHN TAYLOR of Caroline, who is the president of the society, and author of the very useful essays on rural affairs, which are so well known under the title of "Arator." In publishing this paper we cannot avoid a comparison between the Virginian liberality, and the little vanity of similar institutions in which information is hoarded up for years, in order that a VOLUME may be produced. Communiter bona profundere Deorum est, should be the motto of all societies of this description; and we shall take great pleasure in promoting the views of the patriotic gentlemen of the south, by recommending their example to our brethren of the east, the west, and the north.

THE NECESSITIES, COMPETENCY, AND PROFIT OF

AGRICULTURE.

However superfluous it may seem to the learned, an inculcation of correct elementary ideas of agriculture, will be highly useful to the ignorant. Even a profound geologist, or a skilful chemist, if he is an agriculturist, may derive some benefit from practical essays, referring to the surface of the earth, and the visible course of vegetation. Milton makes an angel warn Adam against star gazing, and Eve damned mankind by an intemperate curiosity for unprofitable knowledge. To be diverted from the use of warmth, by contemplating the sun, or from a thrifty cultivation of plants, by profound researches after their food, would evince a disregard to these admonitions. By shooting our thoughts on the wings of imagination into the regions of abstruse knowledge or equivocal conjecture, far beyond pressing necessities and immediate benefits, we should advance in the improve ment of agriculture, as a student would advance in arithmetic by beginning with algebra. An attempt to soar at a bound to the summit of agricultural science, would retard a progress, step by step; and by suffering our attention to be absorbed by the end, we should be seduced into a forgetfulness of the means. Whatever useful results may occasionally proceed from profound inquiries into the arcana of agriculture, it is not improper to moderate the disposition of the human mind for penetrating into obscu

rity, and discovering secrets, by shedding new light upon known truths, and soliciting a greater respect for acknowledged facts. We are more pleased with being reminded of what we know, than with being instructed in that of which we are ignorant. Intellectual contemplation is sometimes an obstacle to judicious exertion, and too often alluring as an agree able luxury, instead of being devoted to beneficial effects. New attitudes may recal us to a more careful consideration of old certainties, and rouse us to efforts, which lead to the beneficial employment of present time, and save us from the disappointment of distant anticipations. The food of plants, like that of man, is sufficiently known for general use; they are nourished by rich earth, as men are by fat meat; and whatever benefits may ensue in particular cases from abstruse prescriptions, yet an exchange of the plainer suggestions of nature, for the conjectural diet of the most profound physicians, would hardly add to the general health of either. Had we exhausted the obvious means for improving the state of our agricul ture, and propelled it to the point of perfection to which these can conduct it, imagination might give itself the rein, dive into theories, and soar in speculation, after discovery-but where it now stands we must start, before we can gain the station, which may suggest other resources, inspired by necessity, or derived from new circumstances. These considerations have suggested the propriety of treating of agriculture, in a state of infancy or decay, rather than as having arrived at a great degree of perfection; and of preferring an attempt to awaken the mind to a more attentive contemplation of what it knows, to adventuring upon the more arduous task of bestowing recondite instructions, of which it may be unwilling to accept. "I tell you that which you yourselves do know."

The Necessities of Agriculture.

These are fertility, tools, industry and houses. Without fertility, tools are useless; without tools, industry must fall; without industry, fertility and tools are unproductive; and without houses, crops are lost and stocks perish. A capacity in land to produce something, does not satisfy an indispensable necessity of agriculture. It must produce enough to defray åll the expenses of cultivation, to supply the inevitable wants of the labour employed on it, and to pay the taxes. If it produces less, the farmer must perish, or resort to some other mode of subsistence. Hunger, the loosest professor of moral rectitude, must become his preceptor; and the poverty arising from heartless attempts to gain subsistence, is his last comforter. No refuge exists from a calamity, produced with inflexible certainty by an insufficiency in the soil to supply him with necessaries, but to desert his home, to enlist under the banner of vice, or to improve his land. The insufficiency of a great number of farms in Virginia to yield the bare necessaries recited, must drive many farmers to one of these remedies. The

first is a voluntary banishment from our country and our friends; the second, a banishment from heaven; and the third, an exertion of a strong, virtuous and patriotic mind. The success of the last is certain, if we use the means placed by Providence within our reach. Land, in proportion to our numbers, abounds; nor are we less bountifully endowed with simple means for its improvement, which carefully husbanded, and skilfully applied, will save us from exile or guilt, and bestow upon us subsistence and wealth.

These means are, manuring, good ploughing, grass seeds sown with ar upon small grain, and inclosing. An opinion exists, that the common resources for manuring, are scanty, and unequal to the end of fertilizing a This opinion is the offspring of a want of industry or skill to poor soil. The Deity, far collect, or combine them with the other specified means. from committing an egregious blunder in balancing expenditure and supply, has provided the latter amply for the encouragement and reward of industry. By absolute sterility, nothing is produced, and of course nothing is furnished for improvement; but whatever be the degree of productiveness, it furnishes resources for improvement, which will exceed the expenditure of the soil. By preserving every species of litter, especially cornstalks, and applying it before or about the commencement of fermentation; by penning every species of stock in summer, slightly littering their pens even with leaves or broom straw, and folding them on litter in winter: and by preserving the manure arising from both means from being wasted by premature putrescence or evaporation, a poor farm may be gradually improved, until it will yield internal resources, adequate to a copious annual manuring of one-seventh at least of its arable contents.

Such cultivation, as will produce both subsistence and an improvement of the soil, is indispensable to any tolerable system of agriculture. On rich lands, that which is bad, applied to a large space, or that which is good, applied to a small one, may yield subsistence; but a large space of poor land badly cultivated, or a small one well cultivated, are equally incompetent to the object. A multitude of farms in Virginia are so exhausted as to be unable to supply the wants of their cultivators, the expenses of cultivation, and the taxes. Good ploughing is an essential ally of manuring, for redeeming their owners from a state of bondage to indigence. Not that kind of ploughing by which the earth is exposed to reiterated by a deep strokes of the sun, or a thin soil is exchanged for a barren one, reversal of a level surface; but that, which by the use of narrow ridges, will diminish the injury from too mnch heat, deepen the soil by a revolution between ridges and furrows, and admit gradually of being very deep, without exchanging a surface having some fertility, for a substratum haying none.

The efficacy of good ploughing towards fertilizing the earth, depends in a great degree upon embalming a mass of vegetable matter below the surface, and thus protecting it against the depredations of heat, moisture, and air, until its essence is caught and absorbed by the crop, instead of being evaporated into the atmosphere. Manure is vegetable matter, and of course vegetables are manure. By sowing grass seeds with grain, we prepare a coadjutor for the plough, from which it derives its chief efficiency in fertilizing the earth; and provide a copious supply of food for other vegetables, which, like fish, subsist and fatten by eating each other.

Inclosing vastly accelerates the process for fertilizing the soil, by increasing the quantity of vegetable matter or manure to be consigned to the plough. To practice it successfully, however, it must be combined with some resource equivalent to the loss of the scanty pasturage, from which it excludes the emaciated cattle. Artificial grazing and hay mea. dows, of high or low land, is a resource, by which, whilst nineteen acres are manuring themselves, without human toil, one may be made to produce more grass, than the whole twenty now do; and stocks of every kind may be thus rendered infinitely more valuable, both for furnishing subsistence to man, and for fertilizing the earth.

Such are the elementary principles for coming at the first necessity of agriculture, which, if too simple for a country, wherein this science exists in practical perfection, may yet be more suitable for our circumstances, than the chymical experiments of Sir Humphrey Davy himself. The vast portion of our lands deficient in fertility, ought to be the object of solicitude, and a mode within the reach of every farmer, for removing this barrier to his prosperity, and destroyer of his hopes, is preferable to a vain reliance upon gypsum, lime or marl, so generally unattainable; or to curious inquirers after new discoveries, so frequently abortive. From an experience of many years, during the use of several hundred tons, I believe that even gypsum, the prince of mineral manures, whatever may be its temporary effect, will have no lasting influence in fertilizing a farm, unless it is associated with the four specified means. Then, indeed, it becomes an ally, which will accelerate a victory they are able to gain in its absence, but to which gypsum is wholly incompetent without their assistance.

This plain and practicable mode of coming at the cardinal agricultural necessity, is not less adapted for feeding the moral nature of man, than for supplying his physical wants. Hope, however liable to be mortified by disappointment, or satiated by gratification, continues to animate the hu man mind, and will forever be the best source of human happiness. A. discovery by which it might be constantly enlivened, without being discouraged by fruitless efforts; and constantly gratified, without being cloyed; would satisfy the utmost wish to which man can aspire, and disclose

the utmost felicity, of which he is capable. Some approach towards this moral longitude, is made by the farmer who gradually enriches his land. Though fruition increases, as he proceeds, it generates new hopes, and kindles new ardour; nor will he in fertilizing his land, during the longest life, have occasion, like a satiated conqueror, to weep, because he has nothing more to attain.

Tools are a necessity of agriculture, next to fertility. I will not assert, that the difference between a water mill and a mortar for reducing corn to meal, could be used as a just illustration of the difference in effect between an excellent stock of agricultural tools, and those now used in the state. But as I admit my own title to a share of the censure, I may say, that our tools are extremely defective. Even Freeborn's cast iron ploughs, of his largest size (a recent invention) saves one half of the labour necessary to do the same work, with those I used a few years past, which were at least equal to the average of the ploughs used in the whole state. This immense saving results in some measure, from the superior facility with which they work, but chiefly from the superior effect of the work itself, which renders the customary repetitions, not only superfluous, but pernicious. These ploughs remove the necessity of repeated exposure to the sun and laceration of roots, required by bad ploughs, and bestow a larger crop from diminished labour. The loss from bad ploughs, and from the deficiencies of other tools, weighs heavily upon private industry and national prosperity. To exchange this silly debit for the gain arising from good tools, would manifestly produce both a private and public profit of double the loss. My unskilfulness in mechanism, and inexperience of the great variety of agricultural tools, compels me to regret an inability to display the vast importance of this subject. But I am so tho roughly impressed with it, by the inefficacy of most of the tools we possess, and the total absence of many, undoubtedly, of great value, that I believe a tool office, for effecting improvements unclogged by monopoly, and collecting foreign models, which might be used with impunity, would be more useful than the patent office for new inventions. A practical agricultural commissioner, whose duty it should be to collect and try agricultural tools in use throughout the world, applicable to our circumstances; at the public expense; and to make annual experimental reports of their efficacy, might be a great national benefit. Blinded perhaps by fervour, I do not discern that even this suggestion is extravagant or impracticable; but one plainly practicable, and not less beneficial to Virginia, may perhaps obtain more approbation. The imperfect state of our tools, will be perceived every where, by mixing with the class of farmers of inferior wealth, but of high national importance, and much individual merit. They have no means of travelling abroad to look for them, and if they had, it would be better to find them at home. Next in importance 3 к

VOL. VI.