Subscription $2 Per Annum in Advance. 



TO CLUBS OF FIVE OR MORE, $1.75 EACH. 



EST-A.BLISHIEX> I 3KT 1*8 4:0- 



THB SOTJarBCEI^^T 




DEVOTED TO 



Apiculture, Horticulture, and Rural Affairs. 



L. R. DICKINSON* Editor and Proprietor. 



RICHMOND, TA. 



, ,n,, 



JANUARY, 1876. 



1.1. 



OOTSTTE2STTS. 



The Importance of Establishing an 
Agricultural and Geological Bu- 
reau in Virginia 1 

Physical Survey of the State ; Most 
Pressing Need. , 5 

Notes about Farming... ....... • 7 

.Things in Georj j. 9 

Some Points about the use of Cow.' 
mercial Fertilizers 10 

An Experiment in Drainage 11 

Speech of Gen. Fitzhugh Lee. ..... 13 

Salicylic Acid — Its Value, &c. ...... 15 

Address of B. Johnson Barbour, 
Esq., before the Virginia State 
Agricultural Society 18 

The Public School in its Relation 
to the Negro, No. II 35 

On the use of Plaster or Sulphate 
of Lime 43 

Lord Kincaid's Experiment with 
Stable Manure kept under Cover 
and Exposed 45 

About Fences 46 

Tennessee's Example to Virginia.. 47 



Broad View of Things at Home — 

Corn-Shucking 

Injury to Tobacco Plant Beds by 

Flies; A Remedy 

Ditching . 

Grapes and Wine, by Louis Ott.... 

French Wine Crop of 1875 

How Grapes are Pressed in Spain.. 

Symphytum Asperrimum .. 

Stock Department. 56- 

Pouliry Department 65- 

Horticultural Department ...69- 

Grange Department 74- 

Notes for the Month 

Editorial Department; 

About the Bureau of Agriculture, 
Statistics and Mines 

University of Virginia — Shall it go 
Down ? 

Death of Mr. Crenshaw. 

Biographical Sketch of Geo. W. H. 
Richardson 

New Book on the Science of Agri- 
culture .*;...' 



78 

79 
80 

81 




F 



ICHMOND CLOTHING EMPORIUM 

1007 MAIN STREET, opposite Postoffice, 



Wilkinson & Witk®ra f 

MANUFACTURERS AND DEALERS IN 

READY-MADE CLOTHING 

AND FURNISHING GOODS. 

Keep a very large stock of Fine and Medium CLOTHING for City and Coun- 
try wear. 

Special attention to neat and substantial Clothing for our country friends, con- 
sisting of Suits PANTS, VESTS, and Long Sack and Frock OVERCOATS foF 
horseback riding. " Patrons of Husbandry will take notice." » 

ALSO, 

Large variety of FURNISHING GOODS, Merino and Flannel SHIRTS and 
DRAWERS, all grades; CANTON FLANNELS; best JEANS DRAWERS; 
Linen and Paper COLLARS, CUFFS, CRAVATS, assorted ; HOSIERY, as- 
sorted; LINEN HANDKERCHIEFS; SILK HANDKERCHIEFS; KID 
GLOVES, all colors; CASTOR GLOVES; best BUCK GLOVES; HEAVY 
RIDING GLOVES, &c, Ac; RUBBER HATS, CAPS and OVERCOATS— in 
fact, everything necessary for a first-class Clothing and Furnishing House, all at 
the lowest CASH or C.O.D PRICES. 

Dress Shirts our Specialty- 

SOLE AGENTS FOR 

KEEPS PATENT PARTLY-MADE DRESS SHIRTS 

The plan for home-made Shirts on the score of economy is no longer valid. 
We will furnish these Shirts, made of best Wamsutta cotton, 2100 Irish Linen 
Bosoms and Cuffs, 3-ply ; all sizes, latest styles, open back and front, perfect fit- 
ting, only one quality, and guaranteed equal to the best $3 Shirt in any market, 
for the low price of $1.25 for men, $1 for boys ; selling 500 per week. The net 
saving by using this Shirt in Virginia one year will more than pay the interest on 
the public debt of the State. Away, then, with the talk of repudiation. Save 
the honor of the Old Dominion by repudiating high-priced Shirts. Sample Shirt 
sent by mail on the receipt of $1.25 and 13 cents postage. This Shirt is a public 
blessing; so regarded by all who have tried them. 

WILKINSON & WITHERS, 

Clothiers and Furnishers, 
oct ^— — «^_ ^°- 1007 Main Street, Eichmond, Va. 

LIBRARY 

VVilliam& Mary 

College 



} 



416225 



' ' 5 7- 3T 
7C - /, 




i 




oinr^ 



'/fa/ 



THE SOUTHERN 

PLANTER & FARMER, 

DEVOTED TO 

AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS 



Agriculture is the nursing mother of the Arts. — Xenophon. 
Tillage and Pasturage are the two breasts of the State.— Sully. 

L. R. DICKINSON, ...--- Editor and Proprietor. 

Vol. XXXVII. RICHMOND, VA., JANUARY, 1876. No. 1 

[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

THE IMPORTANCE OF ESTABLISHING AN AGRICULTU- 
RAL AND GEOLOGICAL BUREAU IN VIRGINIA. 

That something must be done, and that speedily, to revive the 
drooping spirits of our people, and give new life to our industries, to 
save us from individual and State bankruptcy, no prudent, patriotic 
citizen can deny. No people have suffered greater reverses of fortune, 
or borne them with more fortitude, than the people of Virginia. 
There is a limit, however, to endurance, a period beyond which hope 
ceases to animate, when exertion is paralysed by desolation and de- 
spair. But we need not despond if we use the means and resources 
with which Providence has so bountifully blessed us. Here lies our 
foundation for success and future prosperity. Our State possesses 
wonderful resources in variety and abundance, and with rare advan- 
tages. There lie hidden in her bosom quarries of marble, gypsum, 
slate, granite and other desirable stones; beds of coal, veins of iron, 
lead, copper, gold and other valuable metals, but feebly developed 
and many wholly undiscovered. Her soils embracing every variety 
from the rich alluviums of her rivers and coast, through the sandy, 
slaty and clay loams of the middle, to the limestone soils of the west, 
are susceptible of almost unlimited improvement, and the production 
of the finest specimens of agricultural and horticultural products 
grown in the temperate zone. Some of these are noted for produ- 
cing in the greatest abundance and of the finest quality, tobacco, 
ground-peas and sweet potatoes. The State is threaded with noble 
rivers and smaller streams whose falls have never been disturbed by 
the busy hum of the shuttle and loom, and whose waves have never 
been diverted to turn the wheel of industry, to propel the ponderous 
hammer on the ringing anvil, to drive the spinning millstone or the 
rattling shafting for endless mechanisms. 

To develop and utilize our resources and advantages is imperative- 
ly demanded, if we would repair old losses and bring new prosperity. 



THE SOUTHERN [January 



"We must foster and encourage the wealth-producing industries of the 
State. Agriculture, mining and manufactures need all that science, 
aided by State patronage, can confer to develop our natural resources 
and to utilize them for the public good. Our constitution wisely 
provides for a bureau of statistics, agricultural chemistry and geol- 
ogy ; and it is a sad misfortune that no effort has been made by our 
law-makers for its establishment. The loss to the farmers in one 
year from the want of reliable crop reports and through press esti- 
mates; the losses consequent upon the purchase and use of fertilizers 
containing ingredients useless upon the lands to which they were ap- 
plied, and the want of proper information, as regards agricultural 
chemistry and economical geology, which it is the business of such a 
bureau to furnish, amounts to more annually than the cost of estab- 
lishing such a bureau, making a thorough geological survey and soil 
map of the State, analyzing every variety, of her soil, every commer- 
cial fertilizer offered for sale in her borders, and the expenses of the 
bureau for many years. 

Our sister State, North Carolina, has demonstrated what can be 
done in this line with a very limited amount of means. With an an- 
nual appropriation of only five thousand dollars, for a few years, her 
distinguished and able Superintendent, Professor W. C. Kerr, has 
made a geological, mineralogical, botanical and agricultural survey 
of the State, published a geological map of the same ; collected min- 
eral, botanical and geological specimens, arranged by counties in a 
well filled and well arranged museum, in which are to be found also 
fossils, shells, skeletons and curiosities found in various portions of 
the State; analyzed soils from every section of the State, with sug- 
gestions for the best mode for improving the same ; calculated the 
extent and value of its water power and facilities for manufactories, 
made many valuable suggestions tending to a fuller development of 
the resources of the State ; and published the result of his examina- 
tions^ surveys and labors in a book of 450 pages, replete with most 
interesting and profitable information, an honor to its author and a 
credit to the State. 

All honor to North Carolina who was the first to order a public 
geological survey of the State. And although partial surveys were 
commenced as far back as 1823, and continued at various times, by 
different superintendents, it remained for Professor Kerr to con- 
summate the work in a manner that will hand down his name to fu- 
ture generations as a benefactor of his race. 

What lias Virginia done in this line ? Scarcely anything worthy 
of the subject, and what she commenced has never been finished, as 
the report of Professor Rogers has never been published. 

It is a significant fact that States that have made geological sur- 
veys, and maintain agricultural, geological and statistical bureaus, 
are more prosperous than those that neglect these indispensable aids 
to a speedy and profitable development of the resources of a State. 
The writer demonstrated in the November No. of the Planter and 
Farmer, that farming in New Jersey paid three times as much as the 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 3 

same business did in Virginia. But New Jersey is fostering he r 
agriculture and manufactures by judicious expenditures of money to 
develop them. So of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, 
Michigan, California, Missouri, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. 

Georgia, the empire State of the south, starts with §13,000 appro- 
priated by the State, and " employs a corps of eight geologists, 
chemists, &c" "Kentucky expends about $20,000 per annum for 
the work of her survey." 

North Carolina, as before remarked, expends about $5,000 per an- 
num, and u this covers all expenses, salaries, museum rent, field work, 
laboratory," &c. 

By every principle of political and industrial economy, Virginia 
demands that a beginning should be made of developing her resources 
and encouraging her industries. The establishment of such a bureau 
will benefit every class of her population. According to the census 
of 1870, she had engaged in all occupations 412,665 persons. In 
manufacturing, mechanical and mining industries, 49,413 — about 12 
per cent. In trade and transportation, 20,181 — about 5 per cent. 
In farming, 214,550 — about 60 per cent. In all other occupations 
and in idleness, 98,521 — about 23 per cent. The industrial classes 
that will be directly and mainly benefited by such a bureau, number 
254,144 or 77 per cent, while the professional and personal occupa- 
tions of the 23 per cent, will be incidentally benefited. On a subject 
therefore of such general importance, it is to be hoped that we are a 
united people. It will require a united effort of all our people to 
bring prosperity to our industries, and save our State from bank- 
ruptcy. We would fain believe that all classes of our population are 
eager with willing hearts and ready hands to build her up and place 
her where she should stand, pre-eminent, in the foremost rank, among 
the most energetic, the most advanced, the most prosperous of all 
the States. 

We have indeed, a goodly heritage, let us not neglect opportuni- 
ties for its improvement. Our Legislature will not satisfy the ex- 
pectations of their constituents, if they fail to inaugurate substantial 
measures for the relief and encouragement of the people. We have 
suggested one that will benefit all, help the State and return a thou- 
sand fold the small appropriation necessary for its accomplishment. 

Halifax county, Va. R. L. Ragland. 

Note by the Editor. — This appeal to the Legislature is not made a moment 
too soon, and we are full of hope that it will bear good fruit. Thepersonnel of 
that body is in the highest degree creditable to the State, and we are persuaded 
that we may look for results consistent with its character. 

While it was not so intended, and certainly not desired, the abolition of slave- 
ry is bearing with much greater hardship upon the North than upon the South, 
as sorely as it affected us in the direct loss it involved. The South before the 
war was the storehouse of crude materials, which the ingenuity of the North 
worked up into manufactured articles. The production of cotton goods, in par- 
ticular, has proved the main source of wealth to England ; ithas not done less for 
New England. Mr. Gladstone declared, not long ago, that the wealth of England 



THE SOUTHERN [January 



had increased more since the year 1800 than it had from the invasion of Caesar to 
that time. The energy in the South that was devoted almost wholly to the 
growth of raw products has, by the destruction of its large estates, or rather the 
ability to conduct them, been largely turned into the channels of trade and 
manufactures. We find that we can do both, and that the advantages are 
greatly in our favor. Reasonably good government and an honest presentation 
of the inducements we have to offer, will bring about a transfer of capital to 
our limits, so ample, that the most sanguine amongst us will be astonished. 
As it is, cotton factories have been already established to such an extent as to 
double Southern consumption in three 'years. A pound of cotton turned into 
number 14 yarn can be spun now in the South for 3£ cents less than in New Eng- 
land. This added to the fact that the raw material is delivered at the door of 
the factory, if desired, "in the seed," thus divesting it of the charges the North- 
ern manufacturer must incur befor it reaches him, exhibits an advantage that 
must operate as certainly as the disposition of water to flow down hill. Capital 
goes where it will pay best. While the Cotton States have their advantages, Vir- 
ginia has not been left barren — her climate is genial because her location is be- 
tween the North and the South; her soils are mainly rock- made and, there- 
fore, can never be exhausted ; her rivers are numerous and abound with available 
water-power : her timber is noted for its excellence ; her mountain slopes admit 
of stock-raising on the largest scale, and also of wine production; her quarries 
show granite, soapstone, slate and limestone in abundance, and her mines yield 
the whole range of metals from gold to iron. All this we are told in a general 
way, and it is a fact ; but the world must know the details, and know them with 
absolute exactness. What does it avail a man if he has a house filled with 
food, and the doors and windows barred so securely as to keep him from getting 
into it. He knows the food is there, but failing to get at it, he will either starve 
to death or go to some other country where he can get what he needs. We 
have had such a house these many years, but standing closed against its people, 
the brains of men that would have added glory to their native State, being use- 
less there, have left its borders to find a lodgment with people whose genius rose 
above the mere business of local politics. Men of only common prudence, hav- 
ing means, are not satisfied with declamation ; th°,y must hiow the facts. God 
has not been unmindful of us. He has made the provision ; are we men if we 
cannot administer it? Can we afford to delay a single year? We will flounder 
forever if we insist upon placing the burden of our maintenance so entirely upon 
the tiller of the soil; not that he is unwilling to do his part, but his calling of &\\ 
others, has been left the worst off by the war. With all the forces at our com- 
mand, brought, into only reasonable play, the burden will be so divided that no 
one will feel it. We have left us at least two men in the State who can find out 
what we have, where it is located, arid what it promises. They are Major Jed. 
IIotchkiss and M. F. Maury, Jr. The office might, without confusion, have at- 
tached to it an arrangement for the collection and tabulation of the statistics of 
the State. We should know, every year, the actual extent of our tobacco crop, 
r.otin hogsheads but in pounds j the area of land not in cultivation, distinguish- 
ing between open and wood land; the debt of the several counties and cities, 
and their ability to provide for it ; indeed, everything needed to inform an immi- 
grant beforehand of what we have and are as a place for him to locate. It will 
not do to make him dependent upon private sources of information in such mat- 
tors. Capital is timid, and must be fortified by disinterested assurances before 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 5 

it will change its lodgment. We have had (and we presume this is'the experience 
of many in the larger towns of the State) numerous inquiries about our re- 
sources from intelligent Englishmen and solid men in the North, but had to make 
the humiliating confession that we, as a State, had no collection, no bureau, no 
anything in fact that would show what we had. How can we expect other people 
to invest their money in the development of our resources, when we, ourselves 
have not shown interest enough in them to present even their claims to attention. 

Local politics are only a good thing to the extent that their results inure to the 
public benefit Government otherwise is a curse instead of a blessing. 

In founding a department like that here contemplated, we would show to the 
world that we were using our best endeavors to place the State on such a founda- 
tion of prosperity as would enable her to look her creditors in the face, and make 
.good to them the last dollar she owes. It would do more ; it would present a spec- 
tacle of natural advantages, so diversified in their character, and each of so much 
moment as a source of wealth, that an inpouring of good white blood might be 
assuredly counted on, and the old Commonwealth given again the pre-eminence 
she enjoyed in days gone by. 

We cannot boast ourselves worthy sons without we add to the achievements of 
our fathers. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

A PHYSICAL SURVEY OF THE STATE— A MOST PRESSING 

NEED. 

That Virginia possesses great natural resources is no doubt true, 
but they lie all undeveloped, crudely scattered upon the surface, or 
darkly hidden in the bowels of the earth. Nothing is so much and 
sadly needed as an exact, systematic, authoritative statement of the 
extent and whereabouts of these resources. This fact has been fully 
recognized by some of our ablest men, but their efforts have failed 
to awaken in the public mind a due appreciation of this great public 
want. Gen. F. H. Smith, Superintendent of the Virginia Military 
Institute, wisely conceived the idea of making that Institution the 
focus of this great State enterprise, and enlisted in the undertaking 
Col. William Gilliam, a profoundly able chemist and geologist, and 
Com. M. F. Maury, the greatest scientific man of his day. The w'Wk 
was indeed, well begun, but Maury and Gilham are dead ; the efforts 
of Gen. Smith are prostrated ; other and similar efforts have failed. 
To-day comparatively nothing is known of the extent and availability 
of the resources of the State. So long as this fact remains, all efforts 
to attract hither immigration and capital will be fruitless. 

Plainly enough a man who has sense enough to make money or to 
use money is not to be induced to venture his means in enterprises 
based on vague and glittering generalities. He wishes to know for 
a certainty something of quantity, quality, accessibility, facility of 
transportation and numberless minute things. The money holder 
descends into exact particulars ; he pays no attention to the news- 
paper correspondent setting forth with declamatory enthusiasm, that 
the mountains of Virginia are teeming with the most valuable miner- 
als, because he knows well that such a person knows nothing of what 



6 THE SOUTHERN [January 

minerals are there, or what ores there exist, in what quantities 
found; whether the mines are accessible and workable, whether fuel, 
limestone, sandstone, water-power are obtainable; and what is worse, 
no newspaper man ean refer the capitalist to any man who can an- 
swer his questions, for we have no State geologist and no man knows 
what is worth knowing concerning these matters. Let us enter fur- 
ther into particulars : suppose some capitalist who has an in- 
terest in coal inquires concerning the coals of the State ? he wishes 
to know what is the heating power of the coal? if converted into gas, 
what proportion of gas does it yield? what is the lighting power of 
that gas ? what per cent, of sulphur does the coal contain ? what part 
of it is driven off in cokeing, and how much remains in the coke? No 
man upon the earth can answer these questions, because no man 
knows the answer to any one of them. But suppose an agriculturist 
shall ask a few questions of our immigration bureau or its agent, a 
sheep husbandman it may be — what sorts of sheep do best in your 
State? what is the average weight of fleece? what number of lambs 
to one hundred'ewes? what average annual losses by dogs ? Who can 
answer? who knows? the best informed can only guess. If these 
questions were asked in our sister State of Georgia, for instance, the 
commissioner of agriculture for that State could promptly reply 
"ninety-four thousand dogs in Georgia, slew last year, twenty-eight 
thousand six hundred sheep" Doubtless, it was much worse in Vir- 
ginia, but no man knows. The State of Virginia is without statistics; 
such as have been prepared by the Federal Government are prepared 
for the most part under the influence of partisan malice, for the pur- 
pose of hiding and perverting the truth. While this state of things 
remains, not only shall we seek in vain to induce foreign capitalists 
and foreign laborers to come among us, but we shall not be able to 
keep what we have ; our most enterprising young men will seek their 
fortunes abroad, and such little surplus money as may be owned in 
Virginia will be employed in foreign investments, as is the case even 
now, simply because no definite information can be had concerning 
home industries and home resources. We have an immigration bu- 
reau and it will not be difficult to supply them with the means to 
employ a competent geologist, to collect at the capitol a museum of 
samples of the industrial products and raw materials of the State, to 
exhibit and give exact and detailed information concerning the same, 
and to prepare a report for publication. I have before me the re- 
port for 1875, of Prof. W. C. Kerr, State Geologist of North Caro- 
lina, which is replete with valuable information, valuable because 
definite, exact, authoritative. I had also the pleasure lately of visiting 
his museum at Raleigh, and hearing his able and lucid explanations 
and comments upon his collections. It cannot be doubted that he has 
done more to develop enterprise at home, and to attract capital and 
population to the State in four or five years, than the immigration 
bureau could have done without his aid in forty. Yet an appropria- 
tion of $5000 a year is all that he has had to work upon, out of 
which comes his own salary. I trust that some one who can com- 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 7 

mand public attention will take hold of this matter, and that we shall 
have a State Geologist in Virginia. 

Montgomery county, Va. M. G. Ellzey. 

[Note by the Editor. — "What prudent man will change his location without he 
is assured he can better his condition ? How can he have this assurance, in re- 
spect of Virginia, if we continue to have no official arrangement through which 
he can ascertain what we have, where it is. and what it promises? It behooves, 
then, every tax-payer in the State to do his best to induce the Legislature to make 
this provision, and to make it without delay. 

Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina and other States in the South, 
whose progress is known to be forward, have such bureaux, and they are worked 
with untiring energy. v 

What does it profit us to have a goodly heritage if we do not put it to use, for 
that is what is was made for ; and are we men if we spend our time in complain- 
ing instead of working to make the very best out of what is left us?] 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

NOTES ABOUT FARMING, 

The best plan I have tried for improving land is to use finely 
ground Charleston Phosphate, which can be bought at $20 per ton, 
mixed with one-fifth of Guanape Guano ; about 200 pounds of this 
mixture to the acre is applied to wheat fallow, drilled in, the cost 
per acre being about $3.50. 

The next Spring, about the 8th or 10th of. March, clover seed is 
sowed, one-half the quantity to be applied ; the other half is sowed 
across the first sowing about the 25th of March, due reference being 
had to the condition of the ground. The next year this clover should 
be fallowed or allowed to fall on the land, merely grazing enough to 
trample down the clover to some extent. Land cannot be improved 
rapidly by using fertilizers to make clover and then grazing or cut- 
ting the clover. Farm manures and ashes are also used, and sur- 
plus straw spread over the land ; under this system I have seen 
poor land, costing $16 per acre, pay for itself in five years. Corn 
is greatly benefited by applying a mixture of equal parts of Charles- 
ton Phosphate, ashes, and plaster to the hill, at the rate of 200 or 
300 pounds to the acre; the ashes should be from hard wood and un- 
leached. Besides being an excellent stimulant to the young corn, it 
has been found to be a complete preventive of the ravages of the 
cut worm and bore worm. A very excellent fertilizer for corn may 
be made by penning sheep at night during the late Fall, Winter and 
early Spring, under cover, and littering from time to time with 
chaff. At corn planting time this manure will be found to be really 
dry and in a finely divided state, or, in a condition to pulverize 
easily ; a small quantity should be put in each hill. The increase in 
the yield of corn will often more than pay the expense of keeping 
the sheep. It is deemed important to save carefully, under cover, 
the ashes made upon the farm ; they pay best applied to corn. If 
the ashes made in Virginia were carefully saved and applied to the 



8 THE SOUTHERN [January 

corn crop, there would be a large increase in the yield; I think fully 
one -fourth. 

In the preparation of all Superphosphates, a large part of the 
phosphate of lime is converted into sulphate of lime or plaster, and 
the planter pays for this plaster at the rate of $50 or $60 per ton, 
five or six times its value, and my theory is that it is best to use the 
finely ground, undissolved Charleston Phosphate; that the vital action 
of the plants, aided by the constituents of the soil and Guanape 
Guano or ashes, will dissolve what phosphate they require, and that 
the surplus will remain in the soil, stored up for future use, and not 
liable to be leached out like the soluble Super Phosphate by rain. 

I have been taught that it was very desirable to plow red land 
for corn in the Fall and early Winter. My neighbor, who is very 
successful with corn and wheat, says this is a mistake; that land is 
injured by being exposed all winter to the atmospheric influences ; 
that its salts are more readily washed out by the rains, and that by 
alternate freezing and thawing the land is made too light to produce 
wheat. He has a small farm and makes more wheat than those five 
or six times larger. My neighbor states that Fall and Winter plow- 
ing have injured the capacity of these lands to produce wheat. 
His rotation is a clover fallow for wheat followed by corn and then 
wheat again with clover. 

What do you think of this idea? Kelton. 

Note by thr Editor. — Quite a controversy sprang up several years ago among 
the agricultural chemists in this country as to whether it was really necessary 
that phosphate materials should be treated with acid or not. One side held that 
it was sufficient simply to grind them to an impalpable powder, the soil itself 
doing the rest of the work — that is, putting them in a shape to be taken into the 
circulation of the plant. A gentleman in this city, whose business requires con- 
stant attention to suCh matters, took the trouble to submit the question to what 
are generally accepted, since Liebig's death, as the most trustworthy authorities, 
in agricultural chemistry, in the world, namely, Dr. Voelcker, Chemist of the 
Royal Agricultural Society of England ; M. Ville, of the Emperor's farm at 
Vincennes, France ; and Prof. Johnson, of Yale College, New Haven. Their 
replies are too full to be reproduced here. The substance is as follows : On 
peaty soils, abounding in humid and similar organic acids, and also on poor, 
purely sandy soils, the worst superphosphates, that is to say, superphosphates 
poor in soluble phosphoric acid, have a decidedly better effect upon the crops to 
which they are applied than superphosphates rich in soluble phosphoric acid. 
In the first case, to apply soluble phosphoric acid would be simply adding acid 
to acid, of which there was already existing too much for health to the land ; 
and in the second, theabsence of basic soil constituents sufficient to neutralize 
the soluble phosphoric acid renders it unavailable as food for crop plants. When 
these bases exist in abundance, as in clay lands, the safest course is to resort to 
soluble phosphoric acid, especially if it is desired to have a reasonably speedy 
return for the outlay. The action of manures is two-fold — first, in rendering 
available the crude materials in the soil with which they come in contact; and 
second, in contributing directly to the store. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 9 

As to the propriety of exposing broken land to the action of the elements, 
during winter, we can only say that no point in good husbandry has been more 
generally accepted the world over than this practice. Old George Herbert 
(and the pens of few men dropped words of purer gold than his) says : " Frost 
is God's plowman.'' It would seem impossible that any of the soluble salts in 
the soil should be lost if the land was cultivated to a proper depth. However, 
the crucible of experiment determines all things, and the world may err even in 
this. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer. 1 

THINGS IN GEORGIA. 

This is a terrible year with the planters of Georgia ; about half 
crops of cotton, and prices at much less than cost of production, 
will cause much suffering and a vast bankruptcy. 

The labor question still agitates the people, and will do so, until 
the landed proprietors cease to tenant and work on shares. Happy 
I am to find a very decided revolution in the minds of the people on 
this subject. 

The planters of this State are seeding large crops of small grain 
this Fall, but to cultivate grain in this country for market is, in my 
judgment, folly. The older Cotton States of this Union will have 
to become manufacturing along with mixed husbandry. It is idle 
for us to compete with Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas in raising 
cotton. We calculate how many acres to the bale ; tkey, how many 
bales to the acre. 

The three States named are capable, and will in time, and in a 
very short time, raise enough cotton for the world. It costs us as 
much to cultivate an acre as it does them, and one acre of their land 
will produce a bale, while it takes three of ours to make a bale, 
with about eighteen dollars for manure. 

It is equally futile for Virginia and other Southern States to at- 
tempt to compete with the great West in grain raising. All you 
can do is to live at home, and make all you can by tobacco and 
manufacturing. 

Why then do you Virginians demand such prices for your lands? 

A gentleman, a real estate broker in Richmond, sending me a list of 
James River plantations for sale, puts them at forty, thirty and 
twenty dollars per acre. What inducements for plain workingmen 
to buy ? Were I a Vanderbilt or an A. T. Stewart, I would buy 
Brandon, Westover, Shirley and all the rest of those fine old classic 
estates on account of my undying love for Virginia ; but this is a day 
of utility, a struggle for bread, and if holders of land wish to sell 
or are obliged to sell, they certainly would serve their best interest to 
meet the loss, be it real or imaginary, at once; for depend upon it, a 
crash is approaching that will carry under millions of the best people 
of this nation. 

Nothing will save us from want or general ruin but the most rigid 



10 THE SOUTHERN [January 

erconomy, unflinching industry and the total banishment of show, 
pride and ostentatious living. 

AUington, Georgia. S. W. 

Note by the Editor. — We are sorry our correspondent did not assign the 
reasons for his assertions. We are altogether more hopeful. The truth is, 
whatever there is substantial in the future of this country will be found in the 
South. When only two of her crops, cotton and tobacco, sell annually for $350,- 
000,000, something must remain to the people who produce them. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

SOME POINTS ABOUT THE USE OF COMMERCIAL FERTI- 
LIZERS. 

Much has been written for and against the use of commercial fer- 
tilizers, and the question is still very far from being settled. Some 
writers throw all the blame of worn out soils on commercial fertilizers, 
but I do not think this can fairly be done in any case. Soils are 
never worn out by fertilizers of any kind. That farmers who use 
commercial fertilizers sometimes exhaust their soils very rapidly, can- 
not be denied ; but the same is true of farmers who do not use them. 
It is the farmer that exhausts the soil, and the sooner this fact is 
fully understood by him, the better it will be. At least four-fifths of 
those engaged in agriculture are ignorant of the elements and condi- 
tions on which fertility of the soil depends ; and so long as this is the 
case, the soil will be exhausted from year to year no matter whether 
they use commercial fertilizers or not. 

Every farmer who is well posted on the subject, knows that the 
productiveness of a soil depends upon the presence of certain ele- 
ments in the right.condition, to be appropriated by the growing crop, 
and that where there is a deficiency of these or any of them, its pro- 
ductiveness will be diminished to the same extent, and that the only 
remedy is to supply the deficiency in some way. It is often the case 
that the deficiency can be supplied very economically by the use of 
commercial fertilizers, and many who have pursued this course have 
eventually exhausted their lands ; but it is untenable to say that it 
was done by the use of said fertilizers — it would be more consistent 
to say it was done by the plow and hoe. Every crop that is removed 
from a farm reduces its productive capacity to a certain extent, and 
the only way to prevent its final exhaustion is to return the fertili- 
zing elements taken off with the crop. This cannot be done without 
the intervention of commercial fertilizers, especially where grain and 
hay are sold. But commercial fertilizers alone will not do it, al- 
though they are indispensable. It is necessary to keep the farm 
supplied with vegetable matter by turning under pea vines, clover, 
stubble, &c, and not allow stock to run on it much at any time. 
Everything consumed on the firm by man or beast should be care- 
fully saved and returned to the farm. Good stalls should be pro- 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 11 

vided for the farm stock of all kinds, and they should be kept in them 
when not needed for other use. 

The word ' permanent' in connection with fertilizers should be 
discarded at once and forever. Anything that is permanent in the 
soil is worthless as a fertilizer. Our farmers must learn that, in 
order to keep their farms up to a high state of productiveness, they 
must be constantly feeding the soil ; and in order to be prosperous 
in their occupation, they must be more united, and act more in con- 
cert, so as to enable them to take some part in regulating the prices 
of what they sell and buy. 

* Owing to ignorance of the principles of agriculture, four-fifths of 
the present generation engaged in it will go on with the work of ex- 
haustion as long as they live. Much good might be done to check 
it if the readers of agricultural papers would take advantage of every 
opportunity to induce their neighbors to subscribe also. 

Ashville, Ala. M. H. Zellner. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

AN EXPERIMENT IN DRAINAGE. 

The wheat sowed and corn safely housed, our thoughts should be 
directed to the preparation of the land for next year's crops of corn 
and tobacco. These crops in this, the Piedmont section, particu- 
larly love the rich bottoms bordering on the streams, making 
down from the mountains ; and while they are usually free from any 
extensive swamps or morasses, the beauty and uniformity of our 
crops on them are frequently marred by spots of more or less ex- 
tent, rendered unproductive by excess of moisture. Many of these 
spots are isolated, with dry and productive ground all around, some- 
times the water shows on the top of the ground, and often its pre- 
sence is only indicated by its effects on the vegetation. One of these 
spots I have drained and dried in a very cheap. way. The difficulty 
about its drainage heretofore has been that it was so far from the 
stream, and so much higher land intervened, that it was not thought 
that the increase of crop on it would pay for the cutting and main- 
taining even a select drain through the large extent of naturally dry 
ground to the stream. 

I had started to work on it determined to get- rid of the eyesore 
if possible, when the idea occurred to my overseer, Mr. Sim Flynt, 
that inasmuch as all the water that rose on the wet spot sunk and 
found its way to the stream under the dry ground, by which it was 
surrounded, now if he were to cut a ditch through the wet spot so 
as to draw off the water and let it terminate in a pit or well in the 
dry ground between the branch and the wet place, that perhaps the 
water would continue to find its way from the ditch to the branch 
in the same way that it had before passed from the wet place. He 
therefore cut a deep narrow ditch about 20 yards long through the 
wet land and ended it in a pit 6 feet long, 4J feet deep, 3 feet wide 



12 THE SOUTHERN [January 

in the dry ground, and left the whole open to see how it would 
work. 

Quite a stream of water rose in the ditch and flowed into the pit, 
covering the bottom to the depth of about 3 inches, but at the end 
of four days did not seem to have risen any. We then had a quite 
heavy two day's rain, which saturated the ground and formed as 
severe a test as our experiment will probably have to undergo, ex- 
cept in times of freshet. Of course we watched the result with great 
interest. The water running into the ditch had increased in volume 
but little, showing that its source was not near the surface, and the 
depth of water in the pit had only increased to about 5 inches, which 
in a few days shrunk back to what it was before. All of which showed 
that the natural subsoil drainage was amply sufficient to carry the 
surface and ditch water both, even in a rainy season. 

As this test satisfied me, the ditch was secreted with poles,- and 
the pit was filled with stones, so arranged as to leave as much of the 
bottom and sides exposed to the water as possible, to within two 
feet of the top, and then with earth, completely hiding the whole 
drain and pit. 

This was done last spring, and though the past season has been 
quite a wet one, the crop of corn on this spot, from being an evesore 
was changed into the best in the field, having no appearance of water 
either where the ditch was cut or where it terminated in the pit. 

The piece of ground drained was near the foot of the hill about 
120 yards from the stream and was lower than some of the interven- 
ing land. To have drained it in the ordinary way, I would have 
had to cut 120 yards of ditch b" feet deep a part of the way in order 
to get it 3 feet at the wet ground. 

In this way it was done, 20 yards of ditch, 3 to 3J feet sufficient. 
The top soil over both wet and dry land is a red clay loam ; about 2 
feet under it in the wet place is a stratum of white micaceous clay 
very stiff and seemingly impervious to water, which seemed to rest on 
the bed rock, though as we did not cut through it, I cannot say how 
thick it is. This white clay shades off to«blueish, and in the dry 
land either abruptly terminates, or dips under a red alluvial forma- 
tion, which contains horizontal layers of gravel an inch or two 
thick at considerable intervals. 

I have many other such spots upon which I shall try the same pro- 
cess, and from their similarity to the one mentioned above, I expect 
to be as successful in laying them. And I have been thus particular 
about the details, that other farmers who have such ugly spots on 
their bottoms (or hills either) may judge whether the same inexpen- 
sive process might not answer in their cases also. 

H. M. Magruder. 

Albemarle County, Oct. 30, 1875. 



Aim to do some permanent good, that your life may be one of 
usefulness. 



1876.J PLANTER AND FARMER. 13 

SPEECH MADE IN NEW YORK BY GEN. FITZHUGH LEE, 
ON IMMIGRATION. 

Gentlemen: — Some two months ago, a number of persons residing 
in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and in the counties lying adjacent 
thereto, assembled in conference with a view of taking into consid- 
eration the improvement of their section of the State of Virginia. 
The termination of the war found them with the same area of surface 
as at its commencement, not even curtailed by the loss of the forty 
acres (and mule), so enthusiastically promised by the most violent 
wing of their conquerors to the negro. Yes, the large productive, 
profitable estates were there ; there in most instances in their former 
grand proportions and beauty ; there I may say, stretched out before 
their eyes, thirsting for cultivation ; there, inanimate, I admit, but 
speaking almost as to their many and great advantages ; there, as it 
were, ready to uprise and welcome some one who would take care of 
them; and what could the land owner reply to all that? Sad and 
sorrowful was his response^ — I recognize your fertility, I know your 
profits, I am confident of your ability to repay me, but the disastrous 
termination of the war has indeed left me financially feeble and' un- 
able to employ and pay the labor necessary to your improvement, 
and your broad fertile fields must lie idle unless I can get some assis- 
tance to develop you ; manifestly the pathway of hope was illumined 
by but a single ray of light, but which ray, if properly pursued and 
followed up, might, like the sound of the day of promise, widen and 
deepen, until at last it spread out 'unto a glorious brightness; and 
what was that comforting, consoling, absorbing thought? Why, that 
we might try concerted action and truthful representation, bring to 
our aid gentlemen from other sections, whose means the war had not 
lessened, and who would help us once more to march along the road 
to prosperity. Full of such hopes, and as a result of such co-opera- 
tive views, the Rappahannock and Potomac Immigration Society 
was organized and composed of the property holders of our district 
of Tidewater Virginia. A representation of that society is here in 
your midst to-day, here, to tell you how we live, where we live, and 
what we have, and invite you cordially to come down and see for 
yourselves the inducements we oifer. 

Since we ceased to fight each other in our country, two kinds of 
immigrants have appeared to tell us what they knew. The first, a 
class unprincipled, rapacious, eager for booty, thirsting for gain, 
and debauched enough to take advantage of our prostrate condition, 
to enrich and elevate themselves. They cajoled and tampered with 
our laborers. By means of Federal bayonets, sharpened and point- 
ed, to maintain party supremacy, they were hoisted into, office, and 
kept there. The damage done to both sections was great. To the 
masses South, they appeared under the general appellation of north- 
ern men, and representatives of your country, which of course was 
not productive of good feeling; our whole progress was checked and 
retarded. 

The responsibility for their peculations and sins must be borne by 



14 THE SOUTHERN [January 

one of the political parties of the country, which, in view of a pos- 
sible change in the administration of affairs, is trying to unload them- 
selves of them even now. Their presence was most injurious to Sou- 
thern people of both colors, and thank God, in the language of 
your own "New York Herald," the s carpetbag element is fast dis- 
appearing from our southern politics. 

The second class of immigrants referred to, were those who devo- 
ted more time to business, and less to politics, who came to us with 
the idea that we knew nothing about farming and they everything, 
and if they had (for example) 1000 dollars, they should buy with it 
if possible, 1000 acres of land — the more surface for the money, the 
better off — because their superior energy and knowledge would soon 
restore it to fertility, and cause it to blossom as the rose. 

It is useless to take your time up by telling you that that class of im- 
migrants was not successful either in the cbtton, tobacco, or grain 
growing sections of our country. As a general thing, they invested 
their whole capital' in the original purchase, leaving no reserve to 
fall back upon, trusting to the first year's yield to reimburse them' 
in whole or part, and as a result of their great agricultural sagacity, 
they too have left us and are now wiser and I trust better men. 

What we really want, gentlemen, and have come upon this trip to 
look for, are men with a capital, if of only a few thousand dollars, 
who will expend a portion of it only in the purchase of our tide- 
water lands, reserving a sum, to provide against the rainy day, and 
a bad crop year should it come. To all such we can, and will prom- 
ise, successful pecuniary results — and we confidently assert that 
for a given amount of capital invested in our river lands, a man can 
live with more comfort, more independence, and with more returns 
for it than an investment of an equal amount in any other way. Our 
grounds are easily cultivated — no stumps or stones ; and broad rivers 
flow ready to carry to near markets for but a few cents per bushel, 
as to grain, their products ; and such is the abundance of oysters, 
crabs, fish and wild fowl, that ours was the only ^section of the 
State, where just after the war, the people felt no apprehension or 
inconvenience from the scarcity of food to sustain life. With such 
fertile lands, such a genial climate, with mines of shell and marl and 
muck, all we want is to get the assistance which would be derived 
from parting with a portion, in order to pay the labor necessary to 
be used to develop the remainder. 

The City of Fredericksburg, around which this representation 
centres, has an unrivalled water power, and I am very glad to see 
present some gentlemen who can explain that much better than I 
can. It is a city whose refinement and hospitality are proverbial in the 
State, and its citizens are numbered among the most orderly, indus- 
trious of the whole country, bombarded and wrecked by the wrestle 
within its limits of armies during the war; the fortunes of the in- 
habitants were indeed crushed — but little being left to begin once 
more their respective business callings. 






1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 15 

- ■ * • 

Such, gentlemen, is our situation — may I hope you understand 
it — and our reasons for the organization you see here to-day. 

Politically, we are in a prosperous condition — the State is well gov- 
erned with order and quiet reigning throughout its borders — its debt, 
by reason of renewed economy and retrenchment and the recent 
constitutional amendments proposed, is marching to a satisfactory 
and honorable solution. The great majority of us, I confess can- 
didly, are inclined to think as an eminent American has said, that 
"the recent financial troubles, the stagnation of business, the depres- 
sion of all industries, the extravagance and corruption of the public 
service, the demoralization cf the administration, the personal gov- 
ernment of General Grant, the third term project, the violation of 
all law in the policy adopted towards the Southern States as a means 
thereto ; that all of these have filled the people with uneasiness, and 
they are anxiously seeking a better state of things; " all of which 
means we desire a change — but that is not going to prevent us from 
giving a cordial welcome to all bona fide settlers who may come 
among us, even though they differ politically with us. We want re- 
conciliation to take the place of reconstruction. 

Virginia gave to our country, without expecting or receiving any 
reward, two-thirds of her entire territory ; Kentucky, Ohio r In- 
diana and Illinois rose up from her loins, and even after that one- 
third more of her territory was seized and taken from her during 
the late war, and another State carried out — a blow hard to re- 
cover from. Yes, that too we are trying to regard as a dead issue, 
so pressing are the living ones upon our notice. What is left is a 
goodly heritage, and we come here to ask you to come down and 
help us enjoy it; for we do indeed regard immigration to our State 
as the prophets rod, which is to smite the rock of her hidden re- 
sources, and cause the waters to flow out for the refreshing and re- 
vival of the tribes of her people. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

SALICYLIC ACID— ITS VALUE IN CONNECTION WITH 
DOMESTIC ECONOMY AND MANUFACTURES. 
By Prof. J. W. Mallet, University of Virginia. 
Salicylic acid is a substance which has been known to scientific 
chemists for a great many years, but like many other materials of 
practical value, it has long been looked upon as merely curious and 
interesting to men of science and as having nothing to do with 
every day life, until lately a careful study of it has shown how it 
may be prepared cheaply and in large quantity, and has, at the 
same time, proved that it possesses in a very remarkable degree the 
power of preventing fermentation and putrefaction ; a power which 
may be usefully applied in a number of different directions. Some 
of these applications are of a nature to render a short account of 
what is so far known of this remarkable substance not unsuitable for 
the pages of the " Planter and Farmer." 



16 THE SOUTHERN [January 

Passing over older methods of preparing the acid, the following is 
the process which we owe to M. M. Kolbe and Lautemann, of 
Leipzig, who have been busily at work upon the subject for the 
last two or three years. Carbolic acid, now pretty generally known 
as a powerful disinfectant, is exactly neutralized with caustic soda, 
the mixture thoroughly dried by heat, and dry carbonic acid gas passed 
over it, first at the temperature of boiling water and then with in- 
creasing heat up to about 450° F. The mass so produced is allowed 
to cool, dissolved in water, and one of the common mineral acids 
(sulphuric or hydrochloric) added ; a deposit settles to the bottom 
of the vessel which is salicylic acid not quite pure ; it may be puri- 
fied by dissolving again in hot water, from which it separates on 
cooling, or, better, it may be exposed to a current of super-heated 
steam, which carries it along and deposits it in a pure state in the 
cooler part of the vessel used, while the impurities are left behind. 
As commonly sold salicylic acid is a crystalline powder of yel- 
lowish color, but when quite pure it is beautifully white and in deli- 
cate needles. It can be melted and driven off in vapor by heat ; it 
requires about three hundred times its own weight of cold water to 
dissolve it, but dissolves to a much greater extent in hot water, in 
alconol, glycerine and some other liquids ; it has no smell, only a 
slight sweetish taste, and is not poisonous, an important point of 
difference between this substance and carbolic acid. In the concen- 
trated form it produces a little, but not serious irritation of the 
lining membrane of the throat and stomach, while carbolic acid at- 
tacks violently even the outer skin — in fact, just as common washing 
soda produces the same sort of general effects as strong caustic lye, 
but in a much milder and less (destructive way, so salicylic acid, 
which belongs to the same class of agents as carbolic acid, behaves 
as a much gentler and more manageable material. Whenever any of 
those changes in animal or vegetable matter which we speak of as 
the various stages of fermentation or putrefaction are to be pre- 
vented or arrested, this new substance may be advantageously brought 
to bear. 

To the surgeon it proves valuable in dressing" wounds and sores, 
and its solution may be used to keep wet the bandage employed. 

It has been as yet but imperfectly tested as a medicinal agent, but 
already results have been obtained showing that when properly dis- 
solved it may be taken in doses of 15 or 20 grains in 21 hours with- 
out any inconvenience, while it promises to be of essential service in 
the treatment of many formidable diseases, scarlet, typhus and 
typhoid fevers, small-pox, cholera, &c. ; in diphtheria it has given 
very valuable results. It offers similar advantages in the treatment 
of contagious diseases of the lower animals, as of sheep, and its 
price is being rapidly diminished so as to make it available for such 
purposes- without too great expense. 

In numerous manufactures, such as those of glue, of leather, of 
the albumen of blood and of eggs used by calico printers, of ex- 
tracts of dye-woods and of tanning materials, of starch, and gen- 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 17 

erally of any form of organic matter liable to spoil by standing ex- 
posed to air, alteration may be prevented and valuable material saved 
by the addition of this anti-ferment. But it is chiefly to direct at- 
tention to the applications which may be made of salicylic acid for 
farming and domestic purposes that this little article is written. 

In making wine, fermentation may be regulated, and when the 
proper stage has been reached may be stopped, while many of the 
after changes and so-called "diseases" of wine may be prevented 
by the use of this substance in such small quantity as to prove 
neither disagreeable nor injurious. Special experiment seems to be 
needed with each kind of wine in order to fix the exact quantity 
proper to be used, but it has been suggested that in such experi- 
ments about 1J to 3J grains of the acid (first dissolved in alcohol or 
strong spirit) to each gallon of wine may be tried with a view to 
make the latter keep free from further change. 

Vinegar may be similarly treated, with rather larger amounts of 
salicylic acid, to preserve it free from "mother" or mould. 

Drinking water may be kept sweet and good, even in wooden 
vessels, by a mere trace of the acid. In places like New Orleans, 
where rain water is habitually caught and kept in large wooden 
cisterns for months, this point becomes decidedly important. 

Beverages for the sick, such as barley water, lemonade and beef 
tea or soup, which often have to stand ready for use for hours of 
davs in hot weather, may be prevented from spoiling by the like 
means ; the same remark applies to vegetable medicines, infusions or 
barks, herbs, teas, &c. An excellent tooth wash or tooth powder may 
be made from the acid suitably diluted in liquid or solid form. It 
has been found that fresh milk to which but 20 or 25 grains of sali- 
cylic acid per gallon had been added, when exposed to the air at 65° 
F., curdled 36 hours later than milk under the same circumstances 
to which no addition had been made. This delay of the "turning" 
or curdling of milk may not only prove directly useful in preserving 
it for drinking at the table, but may increase the yield of butter by 
affording time for a larger amount of cream to rise before skimming. 

The addition to butter itself of 10 or 12 grains of the acid for 
each pound makes it keep much longer fresh even in hot summer 
weather. 

Eggs have in like manner been successfully prepared for keeping 
by laying them in water in which the acid in powder had been sus- 
pended. 

Fresh meat may be placed in a vessel and covered with water, in 
which as much of the preservative as possible has been dissolved in 
the cold (only about 1 part in 300) or may be rubbed with the solid 
acid in powder and the latter washed off when the meat is to be 
cooked; meat so treated has been proved to keep at least a week in 
hot weather; the taste is not injured, but the natural red color is in 
a measure lost, the meat becoming pale or gray in appearance. 

Preserved fruits, jellies, fee.., may be protected from souring and 
moulding by a little salicylic acid in each jar. 
2 



18 THE SOUTHERN [January 

Starch paste for laundry use may be similarly kept without 
sourness or unpleasant smell ; ink may be preserved clear and free 
from mould, and mucilage prevented from spoiling by a very few 
grains of this useful substance stirred into the bottle. 

Other applications will from time to time suggest themselves, 
and numerous experiments may advantageously be made to settle 
the amount -of preservative to use in each special case and the best 
methods of applying it. 

One point should be remembered; that the compounds of salicylic 
acid with alkalies do not possess the anti-fermentative power of the 
acid itself, and therefore in using the latter contact with alkaline 
substances, soap for instance, should be avoided. 

University of Virginia. J. W. Mallet. 



ADDRESS OF B. JOHNSON BARBOUR, ESQ, BEFORE THE 
ANNUAL MEETING OF THE VIRGINIA AGRICULTURAL 
SOCIETY, OCTOBER 27th, 1875. 

When I attempted to measure my own fitness for the duty of my pre- 
sent position, I was somewhat inclined to suspect a keen, though lurking 
irony in the call made by the Executive Committee of the' Agricultural 
Society of Virginia, until it occurred to me that a hint had been taken 
from the coup de theatre (stage trick) of temperance lecturers, where an 
"awful example" gives bold relief to some "shining light"; and so I 
fear my brother farmers who excel in the profession were, willing to 
present me in striking contrast, that their own superiority — 

" Like bright metal on a sullen ground; 

Might show more goodly, and attract more eyes 

Than that which has no foil to set it off." 

Presently my wounded vanity offered some mitigation in the sugges- 
tion that the call was due, in some slight measure, to a kind remem- 
brance and recognition of the humble but zealous and hearty share I 
had in the organization of the present system of State Fairs in Virginia. 
At all events, I think that our present condition, the stormy period 
through which we have passed, the fearful trials to which our Society, 
like our State, has been subjected, and the gratifying fact that over all 
difficulties and obstructions it has reached its majority, and is now firmly 
established and regarded as a fixed and beneficent institution, justify us 
in taking a rapid retrospect of its history, from its lusty infancy to the 
present time; and I might as well just here forestall and deprecate the 
criticism which-ultimately and inevitably must fall upon my diffuse and 
desultory style of speech. So many topics present themselves, so many 
causes have combined to produce our present condition, that the diffi- 
culty lies in refusing admittance to the multitude, and in selecting the 
more interesting and important incidents and reflections from that vast 
concourse of memories which rush with the force of many waters on the 
mind of any Virginian who has been an actor or interested witness in 
the events of the past twenty or twenty-five years. 

Distinctly I remember (and by the the way, it was in the " bleak De- 
cember" of 1852) the small and, as I must style it, the melancholy assem- 
blage in the hall of the House of Delegates, of that resolute band who 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 19 

in the darkest and most trying hours had never deserted the cause of 
agriculture in Virginia. It was before the days of artificial gas, and a 
few tallow candles gave us that " transpicuous gloom " which old War- 
burton thought was a better reading than Milton's " Darkness Visible," 
and made almost spectral figures of the few who were scattered at ir- 
regular intervals over the hall, "a world too wide" for this Spartan 
band. Gleaming through the semi-darkness was the unquenchable fire 
that glared in the eyes of our venerable President, Edmund Ruffin, 
and his still abundant locks were almost radiant in their whiteness. 
You can readily believe that whilst it was a determined, it was by*no 
means an animated meeting. Presently there was a little fire, even 
though it were the fire of indignation, wjien some of the younger mem- 
bers ventured to suggest that though agriculture and agricultural con- 
templation might be its own exceeding great reward to those who looked 
at it as our German friends say, subjectively, that our languishing con- 
dition demonstrated the fact that it must be presented objectively to the 
multitude ; and they ventured to contrast our Society with that of Mary- 
land, whose State Fair they had lately attended. They were pardonably 
enthusiastic in the description of the brilliant scene at Baltimore; they 
told of the beeves, fat-fleshed and well-flavored"; of the lambs without 
blemish, and the larger sheep, that would have graced Laban's flock or 
vindicated Jacob's tending ; of the crowds of fine horses, of every breed 
and description, for the service or pleasure of man ; and that as for fine 
cows, there seemed to be a row as long and broad as the Milky Way. 
They said that the rush and clangor and whirr of every species of labor- 
saving machine was still ringing in their ears ; and they essayed some 
faint description of the ensemble, where, beneath a cloudless sky, thousands 
and tens of thousands of well-dressed and well-behaved men and women 
were enjoying and adding joy to this brilliant scene. They a^ked how 
could such meetings fail to do good mentally, morally and physically ? 
besides the more obvious results. How many good seed, said they, must 
be scattered, unseen of men, until they ripened into myriads of rich har- 
vests throughout the land. How these annual meetings of town and 
country tended to break down the miserable prejudices which before had 
separated them, 

Our grand old chief was too much impressed with the value of the 
pure gold of scientific truth to think that it required any alloy for mak- 
ing it tough enough to stand the wear and tear of the multitude. He 
despised so much that appeal to the senses which humbler minds require, 
that it was but a scornful acquiescence which he finally gave to our ap- 
peals, and to the last I fear he considered the Fairs as little better than 
the side-shows which infest them. 

A mass meeting of farmers was called, which, strange to say, vindi- 
cated its title pretty well, and I am sure that none who shared therein 
can ever forget the emotions of that spirit-stirring time when that true 
Virginian and noble-hearted gentleman, J. Ravenscroft Jones, sounded 
the key-note of triumph by pledging his county for a specific sum of. 
money ; and how rapidly the contagion of a good example spread ! How 
county after county fell into line, until fifty or sixty thousand dollars 
had been guaranteed before the meeting closed, and we all went back to 
dream substantial dreams of the assured success of the Virginia State 
Fair in no transient form, but for an indefinite period, and, as we fondly 
hoped, with an increasing interest and power. 



20 THE SOUTHERN [January 

In 1853, beneath " an October sun," heaven still smiling on a noble 
and prosperous cause, we had our first meeting ; and cold and phleg- 
matic indeed must have been that temperament which was not thrilled 
with patriotic pride and pleasure when it looked out upon that animating 
scene. For six years, with only an occasional check or interruption 
(for the best plough will clog or jump the furrow sometimes) our Society 
continued to grow, to fulfill, and even to surpass the most sanguine ex- 
pectations of its promoters. 

It became the trysting spot of the State. Keen but friendly emula- 
tions sprang up throughout our borders and in neighboring States. Im- 
proved breeds of stock, better and more numerous labor-saving machines 
were introduced; old systems of husbandry had their defects demon- 
strated, or their excellencies confirmed; good ideas, happy thoughts, 
were sent forth, not so much in formal addresses (which, in all candor, I 
must admit are pretty generally liable to that classification wittily de- 
scribed by Tom Marshall as a parenthesis—which, according to 
the grammars, is defined to be a thing which can be left out without af- 
fecting the sense), but in chance conversations, whose points spread 
noiselessly from county to county and from district to district, accom- 
plishing more good than tons of congressional placebos, those much dis- 
tributed but little read Patent Office Reports. Not least in the advan- 
tages was the renewal of old friendships, which time and absence and 
many cares had dimmed but not destroyed. And to all, it was a benefit 
to have the respite of a week from the toils and vexations of every-day 
life, to say nothing of those more perfect unions which derived their 
dates from those auspicious days, involving, with the least possible delay, 
a Clerk's License and a Minister's Benediction. Here, too, the merchant 
and the farmer learned to rise from the cold, stiff intercourse of the mere 
business fetter to a friendly interchange of views on topics of mutual in- 
terest, and to closer communion of sentiment and opinion in matters of 
state and national importance. Trade thus loses much of its hardness — 
provincialism much of its prejudice. The townsman learns to take an 
enlightened interest in the hopes and plans of the farmer, and the farmer 
in turn learns to abandon that unfriendly criticism of habits and cus- 
toms, which he finds are none the worse simply because they are different 
from his own. The Press too, woke up to the fact that Mr. Burke was 
not far wrong when he declared that in every community the first great 
creditor is the plough ; for whereas they had inserted our first advertise- 
ment, as I took care to tell them, between a lot of tallow candles on the 
one side, and a lot of damaged sole leather on the other, they had come 
now to treat us with the pomp and dignity of type, giving us, upon occa- 
sion, all the emphasis of italics and all the grandeur of headlines. 

Thus, I think, might be traced fairly to the influence of our State 
Fair a fuller, warmer appreciation and development of the inter-depend- 
ence of all the different interests of society ; a kinder sense of mutual re- 
lations and benefits; a warmer glow of friendly feeling, powerful to the 
breaking down and thawing out of the coldness and jealousy and isola- 
tion which had theretofore separated and divided into hostile ranks the 
persons who, of all others, should be the best and most confiding friends. 

I do not say that these fairs are without their drawbacks ; in other 
words, I only claim for them that they are good human institutions. 
Frauds are still practiced upon the unsophistocated. Moses still meets, 
under some more specious guise, the worthy gentleman who is forced to 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 21 

sacrifice his gross of shagreen spectacles, and the greater age of Mr, 
Flamborough is no safeguard for his younger friend ; and I must be 
pardoned for saying, in no puritanical spirit, but in the fullness of a 
friendship which ought not to be doubted, that there is a decided and grow- 
ing objection to the undue prominence that is given to what is euphe- 
mistically called in the catalogues Trials of Speed, but which, when 
brought down to its last analysis, is too much like what was formerly 
known as Racing; and under that plausible title, which seems to divest 
it of its grosser features, is not only far more insidious, but perhaps more 
dangerous than the undisguised race-course — bearing about the same 
relation to the latter that the lottery system does to the faro table, 
gradually sapping and undermining the facile character that might have 
been proof against the broader temptations and more vicious amusements 
of the former. 

With this exception, I think the unanimous verdict will be that these 
yearly congregations, these nineteenth century Olympics, are of inesti- 
mable importance to the State- 
In an article of remarkable interest by Sir Francis Head, entitled 
" The Commissariat of London," he invokes the aid of an imaginary 
witness standing on the steeple of St. Paul's Cathedral, to scan the re- 
ticulated avenues along which the multitudinous and infinitely various 
supplies of food, animal and vegetable, the substantiate and the. luxuries, 
are speeding to that great metropolis ; and by the same token the fancy 
often struck me that I should like, as from some dizzy altitude, to have 
traced, in happier days, the splendid results of that newer life to which 
agriculture had been aroused in Virginia ; to behold the neater and 
securer enclosures, the stronger and safer bridges, enabling the passen- 
ger to cross in safety where life or limb had theretofore been in danger; 
the better farm roads, no longer having the approach a reproach to the 
proprietor; the waving harvest, the fruitful meadows, the laden orchards, 
the gleaming flocks, the stately herds on a thousand hills, the substan- 
tial homesteads, beautified in the spirit of the maxim, that if we would love 
our homes we must make them lovely; and above all, to feel that these 
were the unchallenged-and unmortgaged homes of hundreds of thousands 
of free, prosperous and happy Virginians. 

As beariug largely upon our present changed and unhappy condition 
(of which I am to speak presently) I must state my earnest conviction 
that the failure of Virginia to improve, still more rapidly, was due 
mainly to two prominent causes, both springing in part from the tem- 
perament of her people; first, the spirit of adventure which through sev- 
eral decades, with full and steady streams of emigration, had borne to 
the West and Southwest large numbers of her most active and enter- 
prising citizens, and to that end tempting and inducing those who re- 
main to burden themselves with a double incubus of debt, incurred in 
the purchase and possession of these additional lands, when in the ma- 
jority of cases they already had more than they could cultivate properly 
and prosperously. I know that it is a very gratifying feeling to see one's 
line fence moved out a mile or more — gives one a mingled baronial and 
Robinson Crusoe importance ; we have added to our broad acres ; we 
are monarchs of all we survey ; but how often has the broad acre 
brought the narrower crop ; and the tax collector, following closely on 
the heels of the surveyor, rudely breaks in upon your baronial feelings, 
and leads you to suspect that your pride has expanded more than your 
purse. Our people have never been sufficiently alive to the great cen- 



22 THE SOUTHERN [January 

tral truth of agriculture, that deep tillage is more than broad acres i 
that it is with farms as my Lord Bacon said it was with nations : "Their 
real power is to be measured, not by the scale of miles but by the scale 
of forces." In illustration, I have in mind lands bought seventy years 
ago, (with money borrowed at 10 per cent, interest) which have never 
yielded a dollar of profit, whilst the taxes and simple interest on the 
original investment have more than quadrupled the sum. And on the 
other point, I know of lands in a fine wheat region which, in the aggre- 
gate, never produced more than 10,000 bushels, and that but in one sin- 
gle year, and yet when divided into three portions produced regularly 
15,000 bushels per annum. To hold and cultivate too much surface has 
been one of the great curses of Virginia ; and yet we used to have en- 
thusiastic political economists who rated a man's wealth in proportion to 
the land he held, a proposition, which pushed to its legitimate conclu- 
sion, would prove that Adam and Eve were the wealthiest persons that 
ever lived. 

Another curse to Virginia agriculture was the improvident use of Pe- 
ruvian guano. That grand old growler, Dr. Johnson, (in the climax of 
his indignation that the colonies should dare to resist Parliament), said 
in effect, that as yet no part of the world had any reason to congratulate 
itself that Columbus had discovered America. Be this as it may, I cer- 
tainly think that Virginia has no reason to congratulate herself upon the 
discovery of the Chincha Islands. Do not understand me as attempt- 
ing to underrate the power of this wonderful agent. If we had been 
wise in our day and generation, if we had appreciated its wonderful 
power properly, if we had husbanded its magic influences, if we had 
studied the proper combinations with the less brilliant, but more sub- 
stantial phosphates, if we had made it the basis of improvement, instead 
of bailing it as omnipotent, if we had paused to think for a moment, we 
should have realized the warning truth that the supply was in the nature 
of things limited, and that the wonderful source, whatever it was, might 
suddenly cease. Then, indeed, had we proven ourselves worthy of this 
t miraculous interposition in behalf of our wasted and impoverished lands. 
For the Peruvian had, centuries ago, announced the proverb that guano, 
though no saint, worked miracles. We had thousands of acres too low, 
so to speak, to respond to any other quickening power, and here was the 
golden opportunity of bringing the dead to life, of placing a nucleus of 
improvement where utter and hopeless sterility had prevailed before. 
As it was, Virgil's "O fortunatos sua si boni norint agricolas," might, 
without any violence, be rendered : " Oh ! too happy Virginia farmers, 
if you had only known how to use Peruvian Guano !" By an unfortu- 
nate natural selection it seized its appropriate victim, the sanguine and 
imaginative Virginia farmer ; scornful of details, ever praying for some 
royal road to the fertilization of his lands, and to the possession of the 
purse of Fortunatus ; and guano seemed exactly to fulfill these impor- 
tant duties. We raved about it ; I am responsible myself for some very 
ambitious rhetoric upon the subject. In congratulating my countrymen, 
I remember how I told them that far away, thousands of miles from our 
shores, a kind Providence had withheld all rain from a group of islands, 
that in our own land it might crown the barren hill with verdure, and 
clothe the naked waste with golden harvests. I boasted how it would en- 
able us to 

Lead Ceres to the black and barren moor, 
Where Ceres never gained a wreath before. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 23 

My brother farmers, all as frantic, joined me in this agricultural frolic- 
We laughed to scorn the idea that grass was the only true foundation of 
permanent improvement; that we thought was uttered under the old 
Dutch dispensation. If a few had lucid intervals and ventured to ask 
if there was no danger of the supply giving out and leaving us in a 
seven-fold worse condition, we either gave a contemptuous negative, or 
said that if the supply did become a little slack, we had no doubt that 
the — well ! Epizooty would soon break out among the birds of the Paci- 
fic, and make all things lovely again ; or else, by analogy, that if Cali- 
fornia failed, Australia would turn up at the right moment. Meanwhile 
we drove on fast and furious. The farmers' philosopher's stone at last 
had been discovered. The distinction between poor land and rich land 
had been* broken down ; indeed it was seriously urged that poor land was 
perhaps better than rich, as being more prompt and congenial in its re- 
sponse to guano, and I well remember the merry twinkle of the eye with 
which my honored and venerable friend, the late Judge John Robinson, of 
Richmond, said that he had long had a very poor piece of land which he 
wished to sell, but that conscientious scruples had theretofore restrained 
him from saying one word in its favor, but that now, with a light heart, he 
should advertise it as "eminently adapted to the use of guano." Hope look- 
ed joyously into the future, and told the flattering tale that broom-straw 
was soon to be a thing of the past. Gullies, under the gentle surgery of 
this great doctor, were to be speedily healed by the first intention, and all 
gauls were to be suddenly subdued by the veni, vidi, vieity, of this agricul- 
tural Cassar. 

Instead of using the moderate solvent we always exhibited heroic 
doses, and so we wasted it with a lavishness that to our sobered senses 
now brings the unavailing reflection that it was little short of madness, 
aud its intoxicating influence was two-fold — moral as well as physical ; 
for even where the fancy did not outstrip the actual result, though the 
"exuberance of the imagination were not betrayed by the treachery of the 
half-bushel," yet we became painfully oblivious to the fact that the mer- 
chants were as much interested in the result as ourselves, and that under 
the influence of guano our various accounts ivere growing quite as rapid- 
ly as our crops. An equally fearful offset was the neglect and contempt 
into which the domestic sources of fertilizers fell, insomuch that an en- 
thusiastic convert once gravely told me that the effect of domestic ma- 
nures being infinitesimal, and the labor of using them so utterly dispro- 
portioned to these results — he did not consider them worth hauling 100 
yards, and with the exception of one particular class, not more than 50, 
and as his enthusiasm has carried him into the irade of vending under 
the new prescription, I fear tjnat he is more enamoured than ever of his 
delusion. 

In the midst of all these bright dreams, when Virginia seemed to be 
smiling with pleasure and waving with fertility, the tocsin of civil war 
was sounded : the sun of our prosperity went down and only rose through 
five dreary years to the bloody dawn of an uncertaio day. Not mine to 
speak or yours to hear of those sad times, except as intimately connected 
with our profession. We could have no intelligent opinion of our pres- 
ent condition if we did not investigate all the causes leading thereto ; 
and the first step in successful reform consists in plainly seeing and bold- 
ly stating things as they really exist, without falsehood, suppression of the 
truth, or illusion. We have already suffered too much in the effort to cheat 



THE SOUTHERN [January 

ourselves — in speaking smooth things and prophesying deceits. 

With the rapid retrospect I have taken, we shall be better prepared 
to estimate the true state of affairs, when peace, so-called, came upon us, 
not dove-like, as the poets love to paint her. but rather, as we are forced 
to admit, in the similitude of a hawk, keen-eyed and ravenous for the 
remnant of the precarious harvest which the sword had left ungleaned. 
History had made us painfully familiar with the horrors of flagrant war. 
How the Palatinate was ravaged ; indeed, how our own beautiful Valley 
was desolated by the red hand and iron heart of the remorseless subal- 
tern of a congenial chief. But history has never brought to me so con- 
temptible and dastardly a conclusion as was here presented, when the 
government of a people, proud and tenacious of its position among the 
nations of the earth, descended from its conquering car to doff, its mili- 
tary trappings, assume the disguise of a detective, lynx-eyed for each 
lean mule that perchance was branded with the magic U. S., or to re- 
sume the ownership of every crazy old wagon left behind on former 
occasions, when important business had imperatively demanded a rapid 
return to some old base, or the speedy adoption of a new one. I have 
said that history has never furnished to me any parallel of this ; but the 
speedy change of costume and role recalls the pitiable spectacle it was 
once my sad fortune to behold, when on his benefit night, the elder Booth, 
turned from the death -scene in Richard III, to enact the humiliating 
part of Jerry Sneak in the Mayor of Garrett. . This threatened to be the 
coup cle grace to Southern society, for we did not know but that it was 
the premonition of a fuller and completer confiscation, and we felt that 
the only badge of that aristocracy whose imputation is the stale staple 
of so much northern wit, and the only form of heraldy left us, was to 
adopt and write above our lintels the motto of the Wai wicks : " Vix ea 
nostra voco" — we can scarcely call these things our own — and only those 
who can recognize the full truth of the declaration of the great Napo- 
leon that " Civil liberty depends on the security of property," will fully 
appreciate the extreme torpor which now fell on the Southern people. It 
was already a land of lost hopes and broken hearts, as far as the aged 
and even the middle-aged were concerned ; but it seemed as though it 
were the policy of the government to break the spirit, even the spirit of 
the youth — that spirit, which alone makes a country, and without which 
every thing hastens to decay and desolation. 

As ever happens in the mingled web and woof of human affairs, there 
was something comic to relieve the sadness. I will not harass that fa- 
vorite old quotation about " the sable cloud's having a silver lining," 
for that, even in metaphor, would have been too violent a figure ; for so 
entirely have the precious metals in the form of coin departed from our 
region, that doubtless there are many well-grown youths and maidens, 
who, if suddenly confronted with them, would be puzzled to answer the 
question addressed by the tempting Pharisee: "Whose is the image and 
the superscription?" But there was something of ludicrous relief in the 
uniform dilapidation and decay of nearly everything pertaining to hus- 
bandry, but especially in the more pretentious implements which had 
once purported to be labor-saving machines. Frequently they lay rotting 
and rusting in the open air, remote from the barn as though in the plen- 
itude of our former lavish style we had provided a set for each field ; but 
more generally there was to be seen on each estate some dingy, leaky 
and altogether deplorable shed or vacated cabin which might, with 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 25 

strictest propriety, be denominated an agricultural cemetery, sacred to 
the memory, and containing the remains of sundry disabled and defunct 
implements; videlicet, probably an ancient drill, perchance with one 
wheel off, taken to supply some sudden calamity in a decrepit cart or 
carriage, the sowing arrangement so fatally deranged that it would only 
send down the grain by eccentric jerks, or not at all ; corn planters that 
had become sowers, at the rate of about five bushels to the acre; com- 
bination mowers and reapers, the combination being against the unfor- 
tunate owner, and warranted to break down or get out of order every 
fifteen or twenty yards ; ploughs without handles, and mould-boards with- 
out points ; separators that left half the wheat in the heads and half the 
chaff in the modicum of grain they threshed. Such, in the main, was 
the materiel with which we were expected to commence an entirely new 
system of agriculture, with the lively prospect that the best or rather 
the least worn, of these, unless put under lock and key, would, under the 
ill-counsel of a dark night, betake themselves to another system of agri- 
culture, just then being inaugurated. We may, indeed, say that ours 
was a conditi >n too melancholy for laughter, too ludicrous for tears. 
Our lands ravaged and wasted ; the enclosures of vast tracts of country 
entirely destroyed ; some sections so nearly deforested that not enough 
of trees remained to mark the warriors' graves beneath them ; a curren- 
cy that had passed away like a scroll ; our entire labor-system destroyed 
as by an earthquake's shock, and our helots tempted to revolt as were 
Sparta's at the fearful moment (the physical prefiguration of our calam- 
ity) when the rocky soil of Laconia was rent and Mount Taygetus, torn 
by repeated convulsions, hurled its fragments into the midst of Lacedse- 
mon, burying alike, men and treasure ; but, with them, as with us, crea- 
ting no chasm so dark and wide as that between the master and the for- 
mer slave. Equally may we claim that history presents no spectacle 
more sublime or pathetic than ours. A capital in flames; a desolated 
country, still trembling beneath the filing off of infinite cavalcades and 
the tread of innumerable armies; a destitute and m urning people, 
weighed down under the sense that all for which they had fought and 
sacrificed, was lost ; but with a sickening sense of deeper humiliations, 
and more intolerable mortifications, not faintly foreshadowed, as still to 
come, every moment bringing the keener perception of their disastrous 
extremity, the fuller demonstration that they were still contending with 
a government who came less to succor than to be revenged ; who apply- 
ing their wondrous inventive powers to systematic torture, and finding 
fresh stimulus in scenes that would have totally disarmed an enmity less 
deadly than theirs ; who tramping ruthlessly upon the institutions, ha- 
bits, customs and feelings of their victims, have inflicted upon the South, 
what, in all calmness, and with all the intensity of conviction of which 
I am capable, I must denounce as the most cruel, cold-blooded and com- 
plete revenge ever inflicted, by a government claiming to be civilized, 
upon a conquered and prostrate people. I desire to repeat this with 
emphasis and deliberation, and as a consequence to declare equally my 
conviction, that the Northern government has committed the crime of 
the nineteenth century in the manrer and time of emancipation, coupled 
with the legislation, precedent and consequent ; and I say this as I hon- 
estly believe, in the interest of all parties, of the masters and the servants, 
of the North and the South, and of the whole nation. I have nothing 
to say for or against emancipation, pure and simple ; nor have I time, 



26 THE SOUTHERN [January 

or consider it important or necessary, to discuss the relative merits of 
free and slave labor ; nor need I attempt to mete out the comparative re- 
sponsibilities of North and South as to the existence of slavery on this 
continent. Let that pass too ; enough for us to know that by commu- 
nity of action and interest, it was here. Enough for all to know that 
while the Roman and Saxon slave, and Russian serf, when released from 
slavery, are susceptible by generations of improvement, of rising to and 
mingling with the blood of the superior race ; that nature has placed no 
irrevocable bar there, whilst she has stamped the African to a separate 
existence, and that by God's everlasting decree, the two races could 
never mingle here, until light and darkness commingled shall make' 
twilight brighter than day. The people who are so fond of quoting the 
glittering generality which constitutes the overture to the Declaration 
of Independence must now believe that Mr. Jefferson spoke the words of 
literal prophecy when he volunteered to tell the Count de Marbois, that 
the two races could never live together upon the hypothesis of a practi- 
cable equality ; that the memory of collisions, the reciprocal and ine- 
radicable prejudices, the real distinctions made by nature herself, would 
divide us into parties and produce convulsions, which would probably 
never terminate, but in the extermination of one or the other race. I 
have not struck the chord of your feelings, which vibrates with this 
mournful monotone, simply to vex the air with idle complaints. I am 
not seeking to revive a dead question, but one that is fearfully alive — as 
fearfully and actively alive as is Vesuvius to Naples, or JE^na to Sicily. 
If the South, by free and unbiassed decision had determined that the peo- 
ple brought here in a servile condition might remain upon the dread ex- 
periment of a political and social equality, then the danger would have 
been of our own choice. It was a question which each people had the 
high and undoubted prerogative of deciding for itself, and it was but 
gross tyranny when decided by another ; for outsiders to force the two 
races into an unnatural and abhorrent union; to trample upon the feel- 
ings, habits and ingrain prejudices of one race, and fill the breasts of the 
other with vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires ; to violate logic, 
reason, common sense, and common humanity, by inviting the unequal 
contest between the race which has been on an ascending scale for 1000 
years, with a face that but yesterday was in bondage ; to seek in the 
bitterness of jocularity to yoke the thoroughbred and the dray horse ; to 
seek the wanton humiliation of a people, whose sin was only the effort 
to obtain that separation in liberty, which their conquerors now practi- 
cably inflict in subjection ; to set back the dial of their country's progress, 
whilst they attempt to reverse the fiat of nature, meanwhile shutting 
their eyes to the daily and hourly demonstration of the absurdity of their 
plans ; does not this constitute before God and man the crime of the nine- 
teenth century ? And standing in the full blaze of our boasted civiliza- 
tion, with the proofs of their criminal error, of their foul outrage upon a 
brave and noble people, written in the paralysis of a whole continent; 
written in the languor and prostration of a people eager to be released 
from the spell which benumbs their faculties; with the potentiality of 
scenes by the side of which the horrors of St. Domingo would fade into 
insignificance, and which are only kept back by the prudence of a people 
whom they have sought, as it would seem, to sting into ungovernable 
madness ; to see all this and yet through hate or hardihood, or both, to 
refuse the simple and patient remedy — does not all this justify me in 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 27 

saying and repeating that the Northern government has committed the 
sin of the nineteenth century? that it has inflicted and is inflicting the 
most cowardly, cold-blooded, and complete revenge that a nation, calling 
itself Christian, ever worked upon a prostrate people? The Knout of the 
Russian inflicts more temporary pain, the Bow-string and Bosporus of 
the Turk is more severe and silent and secret ; but the most cruel pun- 
ishment that one people can inflict upon another, if there be sensibility 
at all, is the slow, insiduous sapping of the spirit — for, I repeat, that it 
is the spirit" which makes all that is valuable in a people — for without it 
you may have peace, but it is the peace of apathy, of a dismal, cold, dead 
uniformity of servitude. There was a time with our Northern rulers, 
when if, as they are so fond of quoting and so slow of proving, the hour 
of triumph had been indeed the hour of magnanimity, all the clouds now 
lowering with fearful portent, might have been dissipated ; there was 
that golden moment for reconciliation which comes but once to individ- 
uals or to nations, when every question of discord might have been solved, 
and the nation checked, as it were, for a moment, like our giant Missis- 
sippi by some thwarting islands, would soon have been sweeping along 
with its wonted volume, and resounding again with its mighty music. 
But, alas ! in the sterner and more protracted trials decreed for us, we 
had to supply another instance to that mournful catalogue which proves 

"How nations sink by darling schemes oppressed, 
When vengeance listens to the fool's request." 

There was a man who had only to stand by his own thrilling cry 
" Let us have peace! '" and give, as he only could have given, order and 
repose to a country so great and distracted as ours, and there is only 
Washington whose name would have stood higher in the records of hu- 
manity. But, alas ! it was either his sad fate not to see ; or seeing, not 
to recognize, that higher fame which even in imagination makes the 
deeper condemnation of his treachery to himself and to his country. 

The truly great man has yet to come who, like Edmund Burke, shall 
declare that " nothing less than all America will satisfy him." We have 
found by long and sad experience that the nation in its true sense will 
receive no aid from one whose ambition even is but the vis inertice of a 
sensual nature, of a man who has so little appreciation of his high posi- 
tion and solemn duties that, as yet, he has only made himself known 
personally to a large portion of the country by the threat or actual 
proclamation of martial law, or the presence of his legions in the halls 
of Southern legislatures ; who exhibits his sense of justice by allowing 
the chief mining district of the country to remain in open insurrection 
for 8 or 10 months ; murder stalking unchecked, and arson unpunished ; 
sacrificing the interests not only of the people immediately concerned, 
but of the nation to the amount of millions of dollars, whilst the chief 
magistrate of the country smokes on serenely over this state of affairs, 
but is very willing to employ the whole machinery of the government, 
and to forward every available soldier upon the first notice of a drunken 
brawl in Mississippi. What hope have we from a President who, from 
his temporary residence in Washington, has the State of Virginia spread 
out like a panorama before him, and yet in six or seven years has only 
found time to make one trip, and that so flying that it would seem to 
have been done on a wager as to the shortest time within which a trav- 
eler could cross and recross the territory of Virginia ? What hope can 



28 THE SOUTHERN [January 

we have of a man who can travel over twenty degrees of longitude to 
attend a festive gathering, and yet cannot traverse willingly one degree 
of latitude in the iuterest and for the pacification of his country? And 
what shall we hope from him who, even at the festive board was only 
stimulated in his first, inspiration to sneer at the people whom he had 
overwhelmed ? What hope have we from a President whose study of 
commerce is restricted to a dreamy, listless survey from the verandah of 
his marine villa of the wild and weltering waves of the Atlantic? What 
hope have we from a President, who, in the same spirit that Walpole 
told George II. that he should endeavor to forget that he was the elector 
of a small German Principality, and remember that he was the sovereign 
of a mighty empire, should be implored to forget that he is the owner of 
a villa at Long Branch, and remember that he is the chief magistrate of 
what is a great and ought to be a united country ? What hope have 
we from a man whose idea of logic begins and ends with the selfish syl- 
logism that as he has had possession of the White House for two terms, 
therefore a third term is a natural conclusion? What hope have we 
from a man who has so little appreciation of the dignity and propriety 
of his situation that if the Presidential mansion, like the Vatican, had 
3,700 chambers, he could yet fill them all with a host of relatives in 
transitu to office ! Csesarism in its truest and best sense we could stand. 
It would be something to feel that though in bonds, we were Romans 
and might appeal to Caesar. An elegant writer has said that if to Caius 
Julius, Rome forfeited her dowry of civic purity ; if for him she first un- 
loosed her maiden zone, yet we might plead as Faulconbridge, for his 
mother, that he was the greatest of her wooers and that such a sin was 
self-ennobled ; but it is an insult to call that Csesarism which is but the 
synonym of corruption, and under whose influence our national bird 
wheels lower and lower, and with an utterance that is rather the scream 
of the vulture than the cry of the eagle. When we find that under such a 
Csesarism, corruption winked at if not shared in high places, is perva- 
ding the body politic and oozing at every pore, and that the party which 
claimed to be the exemplar of purity and patriotism has acted since its 
accession to power more like a set of burglars who have broken into a 
house, than like the rulers of a great country, we may learn to what base 
uses the name of a great but generous tyrant, can be prostituted. 

Two years ago we saw this whole country suddenly prostrated as by 
a thunderbolt. Up to that time everything had seemed to prosper with 
the North. They had assumed that they would keep one half, and that 
the mainly productive half, of the nation poor, w T hilst the other should 
revel in the redundant wealth accumulated during the war. They 
seemed to be ignorant of the simplest rules of political economy, and 
assumed that, though prostrate, we could still be tributary. By the 
overthrow of the Confederacy, our currency, as I have already said, had 
passed away like a scroll — a currency which, h;wever inflated, still in- 
volved all our productions and earnings for five years. Our labor was 
gone. In short, as I have already declared it was a social and po- 
litical earthquake. All the money was one side of the line ; and they 
fondly and absurdly supposed they could keep it there, or only dole it 
out twice a year to move the cotton of the extreme South or the grain 
of the West, but soon to be restored to New York and serve as counters 
in the great gambling operations of New York ; but the bubble burst 
at last, and instead of analyzing the question, sticking still in secondary 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 29 

causes, they persuade themselves that a resumption of specie payment 
is only necessary to restore prosperity, and in their wisdom they have 
named a day three years hence when it shall take place — about as ab- 
surd as though they should order an eclipse, or any other natural phe- 
nomenon. Now I know that, as Sydney Smith said, it was considered 
very impertinent in England for anybody with less than £2,000 a year 
to have an opinion, so it is still more insolent for a Southern man to 
express an opinion on financial topics; but, when the grievance is so 
glaring that none but those wilfully blind can fail to see it — when his- 
tory so plainly points the moral and remedies of similar embarrassments, 
I trust that even a Southern man may be allowed to speak the obvious 
truths as they present themselves to his mind. 

Can any one doubt that we are now suffering from the reaction of the 
war — a reaction magnified by absurd, and what I must denounce as un- 
just and malignant legislation? If the North had not been blinded by 
hate, it would have seen that interest, if no higher feeling, demanded 
that they should have lent a helping hand. True magnanimity would 
have said at once, 

u Ye are brethren, ye are men, 
And xe conquer but to save, 
So peace instead of death let us bring." 

But let us throw magnanimity out as an unknown and purely imagi- 
nary thing ; self-interest plainly and undoubtedly required that the 
South should be aided even for the purposes of production. But what 
was done ? Every thing that hatred and low-flung suspicion could sug- 
gest. Qur slaves put virtually over us ; seedy and needy proconsuls, 
so-called governors, men by whose side even Verres would appear re- 
spectable, sent to insult and to plunder us, and by way of climax in this 
direction, Mississippi is still cursed with the son-in-law of that infamous 
general known to this generation as a man wdiose multitudinous silver- 
service is marked with every letter of the alphabet except the letter B, 
and who, on the historic page, will stand unrivalled as a general who 
burnt more powder, killed fewer men, and insulted more gentlewomen 
than all the scoundrels of the past — Haynau and Underwood included. 

As I intimated, in commencing, the number of topics is so great, that 
I can only glance at some of the more prominent, but I cannot neglect 
one subject of prime and 'vital importance. 

The excess of lands, which I have referred to, already great before 
the war, was fearfully increased (in proportion to the population) by the 
breaking down of our labor-system — and if the Northern people and 
Gen. Grant had desired to aid the South, and through it the nation, 
they could, without detriment to themselves, have compassed it by pro- 
moting a generous immigration to the Southern States, still leaving an 
ample share of the incoming population to themselves. They might 
have acted towards us so- as to soothe as well as succor, if they had en- 
couraged a generous immigration to the South. 

But so far from this, every thing was done at home and abroad to 
obstruct, and if possible, to prevent it. Their agents abroad whilst pic- 
turing the fatness of the Credit-Mobilier's lands, the social merit and 
pecuniary promises of Duluth, and the semi-tropical climate and pro- 
ductions along the Northern Pacific Railroad, were instructed to make a 
dark back ground of the South, to represent that whatever might have 
been its former glories, "something ailed it now, the place was cursed," 



30 THE SOUTHERN [Ja™ary 

as indeed it is with a "Brother's Curse." And the President's spokesman 
and confidential friend, Gen. Butler, held out in so many words, the hope 
that the day might not be far distant when the Northern army might 
again descend, taking with them, this time, the Surveyor and his Chain — 
in other words that a partition of Southern lands was no improbable 
event. Could any better plan be devised for deterring immigrants than 
this threat? to say nothing of the stimulus it gave to domestic cupidity— 
a cupidity already whetted by such papers as Harper's "Journal of Civ- 
ilization !" — which coolly suggested that capitalists should "bide their 
time!' till Southern poverty should force a wholesale auction of South- 
ern property. 

I have no hesitation in declaring my firm belief that the South has 
been more injured and the national wealth thereby more largely affected 
during the last seven or eight years than during the whole war, includ- 
ing what may be styled its legitimate and inevitable effects, and equally 
I believe that the present prostration might have been largely diminished 
if the government of the United States had pursued the course dictated 
even by a selfish attention to their truest interests. Equally I believe 
that this idle proclamation, to which I have referred, of a proposed re- 
turn to specie payments, will continue and aggravate the suffering ; cap- 
ital, naturally and proverbially timid, will continue to withdraw itself, 
and the idle capital that such men as Carl Schurz and Governor Dix 
and Reverdy Johnson adduce as an argument against what they style 
inflation, is a proof that some ruinous abstraction of vitality is going 
on. To point to piles of unused money as a proof that it is not needed, 
is about as sagacious as Dr. Sangrado pointing to the half gallon of 
blood he had abstracted as a proof that the patient did not require it. 
And in proof of my other statement that the announcement of a re- 
sumption of specie payment is a ruinous measure, I would be glad if 
time allowed, to give you, from Macaulay's history, what, mutatis mutan- 
dis, is a perfect parallel to our present condition. Macaulay is, I believe, 
considered generally but as a picture painter, and because he has de- 
scribed the Court of Charles II. with the gaity of a Watteau, and the 
Black Hole of Calcutta with all the sombre power of Rembrandt, he is 
supposed not tc^have the requisite dullness of a historian ; but those who 
will study the financial history of the reign of William III, will find, I 
can assure them, the most thorough elucidation, not only of incidental 
but of all the great fundamental principles of finance, and coming back 
to the special point to which I have alluded, they will find that the 
agony of three months in the adjustment of the currency was nearly 
fatal to England's very existence as a nation. What, then, shall we ex- 
pect from the delay of three years, on the back of a war which, whether 
we look to the breadth of its theatre, the numbers engaged or the inter- 
ests involved, is the mightiest the world has e^er known? No, gentle- 
men, if the North wishes true peace and genuine prosperity, she must 
abandon her present policy in all its prominent features. If she wishes 
her currency restored, she must cease to discredit it herself in refusing to 
take it for customs. She must (gradually to be sure) substitute specie 
for the miserable, contemptible fractional currency which develops but 
discredits Mr. Webster's famous phrase that he wanted a currency which 
had the "odor of nationality." In truth, only specie enough is actually 
needed for the change of the country, and if all the notes below ten dol- 
lars were gradually retired, the specie would immediately rush in to fill 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 31 

its. place. Aristophanes, two. thousand years ago, noticed and criticised 
the fact that bad money always drives out good, though he ascribes it 
to the same perverted taste of the people which led them to banish Aris- 
tides and kill Socrates, and surrender themselves to the guidance of such 
demagogues as Cleon and Hyperbolus. Though his political economy 
be wrong, there is so much of truth inherent in his verses, that I must 
give them to you, not in the crabbed original, but in a graceful transla- 
tion, (kindly furnished me by our accomplished Prof. Gildersleeve) : 

" " Oftentimes have we reflected on a similar abuse, 

In the choice oi men for office, and of coins for common use ; 
For your old and standard pieces, valued and approved and tried, 
Here among the Grecian nations, and in all the world beside, 
Recognized in every realm for trusty stamp and true assay, 
Are rejected and abandoned for the trash of yesterday. 
For a vile adulterate issue, drossy, counterfeit and base, 
Which the traffic of the city passes current in their place, 
And the men that stand for office, noted for acknowledged worth, 
And for manly deeds of honor and for honorable birth ; 
Trained in exercisejand art. in sacred dances and in song, 
All are ousted and supplanted by a base ignoble throng." 

[Frere's trans, of Frogs of Aristophanes, vol. 3, pp. 278-9.] 

Equally is it necessary that the present National Bank system should 
be abolished, and the more satisfactory if not safer system of one govern- 
mental currency be adopted. When we take time to consider, we know 
that the bank-notes are guaranteed by bonds, and, indeed, it is said, that 
by a funny financial paradox the notes of a broken bank sell for a little 
more than the notes of a solvent bank ; but the people have grown tired 
and suspicious of the banks, and look now as regularly in each morn- 
ing's paper for the announcement of the stoppage of one of them as they 
do for its mimic representative, the explosion of a kerosene lamp. Es- 
tablish a currency with the broad seal of the government and of no other 
description — stop talking about it, and as far as the currency can right 
us, all will be well. There would not be the same affection for it, of 
course, but the greater reliance would be in some measure like that of 
the good old rebel who, when some little cock-sparrow of a lieutenant said 
his pass was not regular, replied in amazement: "Why, mister, hain't it got 
Mars Bob's name on it?" "Yes !" said the lieutenant, "but still it's not 
regular." "Why, look-a-here," said old Johnny, " I should een-a-most 
think I could get into heaven on a pass with his name on it ; and that," 
he added, "is what's the matter with this Confed. money ; if the notes 
had Mars Bob's name on them, they'd be as good as gold.''" 

If time allowed, I should he glad to speak somewhat more in detail 
on this subject, and to expose the unfairness of the advocates of a pre- 
tended resumption of specie payments. It does not require learned es- 
says to prove the advantage of a good specie basis; and to talk of any 
other measure of value were as absurd as to propose a new mariner's 
compass. But after all, we must remember that no country in the 
world has, or could have, an actual equivalent in coin or bullion for its 
currency. If England, for instance, has an apparent reserve of 11 per 
cent, of cash, it is only apparent, for this reserve has to meet the liabili- 
ties of every bank in the United Kingdom. And if France makes a 
better show, it is only because that, in addition to the thriftiness of her 
people, she has revenged her disasters in the field by cornering Ger- 
many in the money market, and making Berlin tributary to Paris in 



32 THE SOUTHERN [January 

the matter of silver. Bat I will not extend the discussion of this topic 
too far, nor weary you with columns of figures, for at best the currency 
is but a secondary question, or, to speak more correctly, it depends al- 
most entirely upon a restoration of confidence between the various mem- 
bers of our country ; nor is there any likelihood of a return to what is 
termed specie payments, or true prosperity in any branch, until this 
happy result is reached and the congestion removed which now threatens 
apoplexy to one side and atrophy to the other.* 

If the North desires a genuine prosperity, it must cease to legislate as 
though the nation stopped at Mason and Dixon's line ; as though all 
below were only outlying provinces. Is there one amongst us who has 
failed to observe that in all things at Washington there is a studied, we 
may even say a contemptuous, restriction of the discussion of national 
topics to that portion of the country which was victorious in the war ? 
I need not dwell on what might be termed the bitter humor of legisla- 
tion, whereby after a successful war for the union, the "rebel" States 
were declared out of the Union ; nor need I do more than recall our 
own immediate case, when we were kept just long enough in the Union 
to be divided, with the result that, one half of us fell into and the other 
half out of the Union. Passing over these amiable eccentricities, I 
must ask if you have not noticed that in the main the South is spoken 
of very much as Russia regards Poland, the Spaniards Cuba, the French 
Algeria? Sometimes this spirit has a ludicrous manifestation, as, for in- 
stance, in a paper which, though edited with marked ability, does not 
vindicate its comprehensive title of the Nation, and puts on even more 
than its ordinary supercilious or patronizing tone in speaking of the 
South. Not long since, in the notice of some horse-book, it said : "Now 
we as a people do not ride much." Just think of such a remark, when 
the people of the United States includes ostensibly a dozen States, where, 
except in travel, the chief style of locomotion is riding — of a people 
who take to riding so young that in a short time it is as natural as to 
draw the breath of life. If this cockney critic could attend our Fair, 
I think he would acknowledge that there is still some portion of the 
people who retain what old Ben calls, 

^The Centaur's skill, the art of Thrace, to ride." 
And might we not say, in strictest truth, that if the strain of Bucepha- 
lus were repeated ten thousand times, we could still furnish young Alex- 
anders enough to tame and master them ? Methinks the writer of this 
article could never have heard how some men rode certain black horses 
about fourteen years ago, and that there are other plains than those of 
Marathon and Blenheim, where superstition nightly hears the neighing 
of chargers — still sees, with heated fancy, the rushing squadrons of 
spectral war. 

*If time allowed, and an array of figures were not so proverbially tedious and odious to a public 
audience, it would be easy to show how entirely delusive are the examples ottered by those who 
have cunningly perverted our prayer for delay and plea against haste into an imputed desire for 
inflation. It could be demonstrated that Sir Robert Peel's bill (1819,) for resumption in 182:1 of 
specie payments under far more favorable conditions than ours, was the obvious cause of the wide- 
spread bankruptcy which followed in 1825; and that the change, effected by the same statesman 
(in 1811), by which the issue and discount departments are separated in the bank of England, has 
so far failed that in the space of twenty years it has been necessary to violate the law three times, 
and then relieve the business community (not by contracting, as our financiers would have us do, 
but) by a generous issue of exchequer notes in sufficient quantities to relieve the pressure. Equally 
would it be competent to show that the plea of Schurz, Dix and Johnson, that there are large sums 
of money lying idle, is about as satisfactory and sensible as the remark of the poor, simple Marie 
Antoinette, who, when told that the Parisians were rebellious from scarcity of bread, cried, "Why, 
then, don't they eat cake ?" 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 33 

To sum up and close : There can be no perfect union and no pros- 
perity for which a freeman cares, so long as this assumption of superior- 
ity prevails. Nor is it sufficient to think that .all difficulties can be re- 
moved by a Bunker Hill apotheosis, so long as they return to the same 
course of insult and injustice. These beautiful sentiments must become 
fixed in action before we learn to value them very highly. As far as I 
have seen yet, they are all of that same type of mournful evanescence, 
and call for a similar cry of lyrical despair, as when 

Hans Breitmann gife a barty ; 

Where ish dat barty now ? 
Where is the lofely, golden cloud 

Dat float on de mountain's prow? 
Where is de himmel strahland stern 

De star of de sphirits light? 
All goned afay mit de lager pier, 

Afay in de ewigkeit. 

They may have Centennials and every other style of outward show, and 
we may go to them, but until there is some vital and substantial change 
of treatment, there will be a hissing cry in their ears, " Yours is but a 
rhetorical liberty — ye are but the hollow chanters of a hollow Republic!" 
No, my friends, there can be no mere sentimental settlements of troubles. 
I was taught from my earliest youth to love my whole country, and I trust 
the day is not far distant when again it will be a joy to me wherever I 
go, by fertile field or prosperous village or in stately city, to feel a joy 
in the thought, this too is my country; but I should do injustice to my 
nature and to my own people, if I should gloss over the wrongs of my 
State. Nothing is to be gained and much may be lost by hypocrisy. 
When we find that it is neither in a pitying or patronizing spirit, but 
with a determination to remedy, as far as possible, the evils of the past, 
and to give the surest pledges of security for the future, then, and not 
till then, can we sincerely say "give us your hand my friend and 
brother." 

Until that time arrives our duty lies here in Virginia, and thanks be 
to God, though her fields were ravaged and her hearths made desolate — 
the one can be covered with verdure and harvests, and the Great Com- 
forter will bring peace to the other. Though our capital was swept by 
fire, it has found beauty for ashes — and she has jewels of which neither 
time and violence can rob her — the story of her defence, of her long 
agony and transcendent woe, can never die. Imperishable, too, will be 
the fame of her worthies, and we do well yearly to assemble the youth 
of Virginia to catch and renew fresh love and zeal for the Mother as 
they gaze upon the lineaments of the great men grouped here in monu- 
mental harmony and grandeur, not least among them, him * whose 
effigy was yesterday unveiled — a man who, for the land he could not 
save, was well content to die, and to die on the scene of his glory — the 
death which the God of battles would seem to reserve for his most fa- 
vored sons, whether on sea or land, on the blue waves of Trafalgar, on 
the heights of Abraham, or amid the forests of Virginia. Of a truth 
may we say of him : 

Sweet in manners, fair in favor, 

Mild in temper, fierce in fight, 

Warrior nobler, gentler, braver, 

Never shall behold the light ! 

*Unveiling of Jackson's statue, October 26th, 1875. 



34 THE SOUTHERN . [January 



From the history of these illustrious men, the rising generation will 
learn the glorious lesson that Virginia will never without protest, if she 
be powerless, consent to be humiliated or degraded; and that whilst, 
with generous alacrity, she recites the praise of other States for various 
deeds of high emprise, she can never forget that from her origin it has 
been her proud privilege, as though consecrated by God from genera- 
tion to generation, and from age to age, against tyranny in every shape, 
to defend truth, honor, religious liberty and constitutional freedom, and 
even in her poverty and sorrow her heart still throbs with the immortal 
hope that through all the ages yet to come, she shall still be their bright 
exemplar and faithful custodian. 

Note by the Editor. — This splendid effort of Col. Barbour is worthy the 
best days of the Commonwealth. When the question of its publication came 
up in the meeting, very considerable opposition was manifested by several wor- 
thy gentlemen, members of the Society. They feared indeed that its sentiments 
might prove distasteful to some people north of the Potomac. They forgot that 
it was the utterance not of a man who counseled a separation of the States, but 
of one who, during the whole war, maintained the position of a consistent Union 
man. While it was a source of the most sincere regret to the friends of the cause 
so dear to us, that one about whose name clustered so much glory, should stand 
aloof from his friends in the struggle, still no man questioned his motives. The 
Barbour was incapable of dishonor. Who then had a better right to utter such 
sentiments, and whose opinions should carry greater weight? 

The eating of humble-pie has never been a wholesome regimen to anybody, 
and it never will be. We have no cause to resort to that regimen, >and we ought to 
be despised if we do. Hungary refused it, and refused it for two hundred years. 
It was not because the Magyars deserved mercy, that the infamous House of 
Hapsburg was at last brought to its senses. It was the realization of the 
truth that a house divided against itself could not stand, and that a man with a 
musket in his hand, and no love of country in his heart, could not be de- 
pended upon as an element of defence. 

The contrast between the claim urged by the North, in vindication of the 
war, and its conduct since, proves that no principle was involved ; that it was 
hate, pure and simple, and that they thanked God for the pretext to give this 
feeling form and energy. If we remember aright, it was the late Chief Justice 
Chase, who admitted that it was not slavery he hated so much as the slaveholder. 
Why ? This slaveholder was the main source of his people's wealth, and was a 
man who suffered wrong to his interests, year after year, with a patience that 
was sublime. He was hated because he was the superior man, and governed because 
he couldn't help it. 

Now, the Union is restored, or it is not. If it is, this hate must cease, and 
cease forever ; otherwise the Union is the merest rope of sand, and not worth 
the wind of a cross-road declaimer, let alone the display arranged to take place 
at Philadelphia this year. As there is nothing to show that a substantial recon- 
ciliation is contemplated by the "Centennial," Virginia, of all other States, has 
no business there. Everything that made her history glorious in the past is ig- 
nored by the vulgar despotism at Washington ; and she has no cause whatever to 
congratulate herself that she has ceased to be a colony of England. We trust, 
therefore, that the Legislature will refuse to appropriate a cent for any such pur- 
pose. There is no possible way in which she could stultify herself more. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 35 

Some excellent people think that a collection of our products carried there 
might result in material benefit to the State. We can see no such result, inas- 
much as people who have means and leisure enough to enable them to go a long 
distance to see shows, have no inducement to change their homes, and want 
none. If we arrange here at Richmond, our capital, an honest collection, show- 
ing our resources, with a man in charge of it who knows nothing about rose color, 
and will go to the trouble and expense of putting in print a faithful account of 
them, to be sent directly to the people we want to have here, it will bring more solid 
returns in a single year than all the big shows in the world combined. Besides, 
a hungry man cannot make a satisfactory choice with a thousand tempting dishes 
before him, if hungry men were not seldom guests at such tables. We are abso- 
lutely amazed that so many people have permitted themselves to be blinded by 
the wary hotel men and shopkeepers of Philadelphia— a city intensely "loyal" 
because its citizens manage that it shall cost them nothing. Richmond, with her 
$16,000,000 of manufactures, pays more by half a million to support the General 
Government than Philadelphia with her $374,000,000!! We want works, not 
words. Words avail nothing — nay, more, are a mockery, when acts (ballots) 
persistently keep in power people whose conduct is a disgrace to civilization, 
and whose exponents exhibit an utter incapacity to govern where a diversity of 
interests prevail, — yea, to whom the value of office is measured only by the 
amount of money it will insure. Such a travesty of government may, through 
brute force, compel .the adhesion of slaves; it can never command the love of 
men. The Roman mother could, with peculiar emotion, lay her hand upon her 
boy's head, and tell him what a place his country should have in his heart, and 
what it was to die in its defence. We, in the South, in rearing our children, are 
yet bereft of this privilege ; we may not even refer to this sentiment, so utterly 
unworthy the love of anybody has the country become in which our lot is cast. 
In the hope that time will bring a change for the better, we invite people from 
abroad to share what our State has to offer. 

We trust that every man in the State will read Col. Barbour's address. It 
will do him good ; and make him feel that, while his troubles have been neither 
few nor light, he still may, with pride and honor, boast himself a Virginian. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.! 

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE NEGRO. 

No. II. 
So different anatomically and physiologically are the two races 
from each other, that we are told on the highest medical authority 
that the treatment which is demanded for the recovery of a white man 
in fever and other forms of disease will be fatal to the negro ; that 
the most successful practitioners educated at the North or in Eu- 
rope, when they first come in contact with the negro and proceed to 
treat him in sickness on general principles, uniformly fail, and fre- 
quently with disastrous results, until by observation and trial they 
learn that special treatment is demanded by congenital peculiarities, 
both in organization and functions. We have already seen that the 
negro, both in his intellectual ana mora) attributes is conspicuously 
inferior to the white man, so that there is a perfect correlation be- 
tween his physical peculiarities and his immaterial nature. Inferi • 



36 THE SOUTHERN [January 

ority is stamped plainly and indelibly on the negro alike in his in- 
tellectual, moral and physical being. 

This line of demarcation between the races is not accidental or 
the result of outward surroundings ; it has been fixed by the finger 
of God. Since the negro has been known to history, he has always 
been as we see him now. In our dealings with him, shall we ignore 
or attempt to obliterate this line of separation ? It is greatly to be 
deplored, says modern philanthropy, that these differences exist. 
They constitute a great barrier to the success of its pet schemes of 
equality and iraternity. There -have always been men, as there are 
to day, wiser than God, and ready at a moment's notice ro recon- 
struct the work of the matchless Architect. A distinguished scientist 
of our day has told us that the eye is a bungling piece of optical 
mechanism ; and that, under his direction, the construction of that 
organ would have been vastly better. Not long ago, carpers and 
critics were fond of attacking the divine cosmogony, because three- 
fourths of the earth's surface is covered with water, an arrangement 
which restricts, they complained, our race to a small part of the 
planet. They, wiser than he who "spake and it was done, who com- 
manded and it stood fast," would at farthest have covered only one- 
fourth of the earth with water, an arrangement which, we now per- 
fectly know, would have rendered the land an absolute desert for 
lack of sufficient evaporating surface. I do not belong to the fanati- 
cal crew that dares to assail the Infinite wisdom ; that would 

"Strike from his hand the balance and the rod, 
Rejudge his justice, be the god of God." 

As far as I can understand the forms and forces of matter, 
I see the most wonderful harmonies, manifold adaptations of 
material things to our wants and happiness, and even in many phe- 
nomena, which bring sorrow and suffering, a vindication of the ways 
of God to man. When and where I cannot understand, I am 
equally content to wonder and adore ; believing, knowing that when 
the unknown becomes the known, as at last it may, it wilt equally 
attest the infinite wisdom and boundless beneficence of the Great 
Contriver. 

It does not, however, appear to me difficult to explain why the ne- 
gro, not by accident but by the act of God, is made inferior to the 
Caucasian. It is in perfect harmony with the whole economy of the 
world. The law of nature, which is always the law of Gjd, is 
inequality, not equality ; diversity, not uniformity ; and the happi- 
ness of the whole animal kingdom is best subserved by this arrange- 
ment. "One star differeth from another star in glory;" no two 
trees in the forest, no two leaves even, are exactly alike ; and eve v y 
man is different from all other men, that live, or have lived, on the 
surface of the earth. Civilization requires an infinite variety of 
work, which in turn requires for its performance infinite gradations 
of intellect. The man who, accepting his destiny as indicated by 
his humble capacity, performs the lowest kind of menial labor, does 
work just as necessary in the economy of civilization as the profound 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 37 



astronomer who measures and weighs suspended worlds, and mirks 
out their circling paths. The truth is that the number of those re- 
quired to do the loftiest work of which the human intellect is capa- 
ble, is very small ; while larger and still larger numbers are required 
for lower and still lower work, so that those occupations are most 
thronged which least require intellectual strength and activity. It 
always has been so ; and, dream and speculate as we will, it always 
tvill be so. When Christ said : "The poor ye have always with you," 
he stated a general truth, applicable not only to the age and country 
of which he spoke, but to all ages and to all countries. Of neces- 
sity it must be so, it is right that it should be so. Bootblacks and 
scavengers, cooks amd chamber maids, farm hands and operatives in 
manufacturing establishments must continue until chaos comes again. 
These and kindred occupations, constituting the very foundation of 
civilized society, require fo the utnost efficiency of the work, little 
or no scholastic training on the part of the mere laborers. Nor 
can it be said that such work would be better done if the laborers 
weie educated. So - far fror' this being so, the difficulty of having 
it done at all would be greatly increased; and when done, i would 
be done by no means so well. For several reasons, this must be so. 
The fact that a laborer is educated, or thinks he is educated, beyond 
his calling, unfits him for that calling. If a man is engaged in 
work below his education, he feels degraded by it, and that sense of 
degradation compels him to do inferior work. No laborer can do 
good work unless he is proud of his work. 1 know of no spectacle 
more pitiable than that of a man compelled by necessity to engage 
in menial labor for a support, whose education, either in fact or in 
his conception, fits him for a higher plane of life. He is far less 
happy, and does less work, and that less efficiently, than the simple 
laborer by his side, whose thoughts never rise higher than his calling, 
and whose guileless heart is made happy by a word of praise from 
his employer. 

Again, the more simple a piece of machinery is, the more man- 
ageable it is, and the better it does the work for which it was designed. 
When we complicate it so as to render it capable of doing several 
things, it will not do any one of these things so well as the simple 
machine constructed solely with reference to that thing. A mower 
and reaper combined is less efficient as a mower than a simp'e mower ; 
is less effic ent as a reaper than a simple reaper. And so that 
intelligence and culture, and only that, which is required for 
one's calling, best fits him for the duties of that calling. The boot- 
black is not a better bootblack, but a worse one, the ditcher is not a 
better ditcher, but a worse one, if he can also calculate a solar 
eclipse or read with a critic's ken the choral odes of the Greek 
dramatists. 

A higher than human authority hath taught us that we cannot 
serve two masters. Faithfully and well to discharge the duties of 
one sphere of life positively disqualifies us for those of a lower or 
of a higher sphere. Contentment in our allotted place — and a place 



38 THE SOUTHERN [January 

is allotted to us all — is at once the plain dictate of reason and the 
positive injunction of inspiration. A laborer will never do full and 
efficient work unless he finds not only his support but his happiness 
in his labor, content to leave to those, more gifted than he, the 
problems of science and the perplexities of finance. And such a 
course is always the laborer's choice, unless the vile spirit of unrest 
and discontent has been stirred within him by the constant teachings 
of a blasphemous philosophy. 

The practice of men in the employment of menial labor is in en- 
tire harmony with our doctrine, and at once attests and demon- 
strates its truth. The farmer always prefers as laborers in his field 
those accustomed and competent only to such work ; nor will he 
employ, except from necessity or as a matter of charity, applicants 
whose thoughts have taken a wider and a loftier range. To succeed 
in work that is below one's capacity and attainments is just as im- 
possible as to succeed in work that is above one's capacity and attain- 
m nts ; and this the practical man, who, in all matters relating to 
his business and interests, has more sense than all the philanthropists 
and reformers in the world put together, well knows, and acts accor- 
dingly. Not long ago, I had a conversation with a prominent gen- 
tleman, a farmer and preacher, who combatted this view ; and yet 
in the conversation it cropped out that he had just refused employ- 
ment, though greatly needing labor on his farm, to two strong youn r 
men, fresh from the Normal School at Hampton, on the ground, as 
acknowledged, that persons engaged as they had been would not suit 
his work, nor it them. What this man did, everybody else, under 
similar circumstances, does. The simple fact that men uniformly so 
act, proves that such action is based on the strongest and most con- 
clus ve reasons. The cook, that must- read the daily paper, will spoil 
your beef and your bread ; the sable pickaninny, that has to do his 
grammar and arithmetic, will leave your boots unblacked and your 
horse uncurried. 

Some — and a great many too — are and must be mudsills. Somo 
are and must be "hewers of wood and drawers of water." Such is 
the decree, and the language quoted is that of the Almighty. This 
doctrine, so unpalatable to our fanatical optimists, has besn most 
fiercely attacked ; but these assaults, hot with wrath, have made no 
impression on the thick bosses of Jehovah's buckler. 

Society, left to the operation of natural causes, will take its pro- 
per order of stratification. Each member, according to his inherent 
energy and capacity, will find his proper place in just gradation. To 
protect the individual in his rights, not to form society, is the func- 
tion of government. As individuals have or lack capacity, they 
will rise or sink ; and they will rise who ought to rise, and they 
will sink who ought to sink. To check, or attempt to check 
one from sinking who ought to sink, is as great a cruelty to him 
and as disastrous to society as to prevent or attempt to prevent 
one from rising who ought to rise. That father would be cruel 
in the extreme and inflict a great damage on the community who 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 39 

should hold, or attempt to bold, in lowly life, a son competent to the 
grandest achievements; but not more cruel nor more injurious to 
society than that other father who places his son in a position above 
his capacity, and, say, holds him there, a position which requires of 
him duties that he cannot discharge, and devolves upon him respon- 
sibilities, that he cannot meet, rendering worthless, and, from a sense 
of worthlessness, wretched, one who, in his proper place, would 
have been both useful and happy. That every man should promptly 
find his proper level is demanded alike by the happiness of the indivi- 
dual and the general interests of the community. An attempt on the 
part of the State to place all on a common level, is beyond the range 
of its just powers, and is as silly as it is vain. The great Father of 
Waters, as he moves to the sea, bears on his turbid bosom many 
thousand tons of solid matter, which is accurately assorted and dis- 
tributed along his course and at his mouths by the operation of phy- 
sical laws too powerful for human agency to contravene ; and so the 
laws of God's moral government, not less constant nor less power- 
ful than those that control the physical universe, determine the strat- 
ification of human society. We may endeavor by legislation, as weak 
as it is wicked, to prevent this stratification or to make it homogen- 
eous and uniform ; but as sure as God is stronger than man, the 
attempt will end in failure, inflicting, however, untold misery on in- 
dividuals and crippling, it may be, the industries of the globe 

We have drifted far from the simplicity of our fathers. They 
held that government is instituted for the protection of individual 
rights ; now the individual is the prey of government, which crushes 
him with tyrannous exactions, while the highest aim of statesmanship 
consists in the discovery of new subjects of taxation. And now, 
when the President of the Republic, (can we call it a Republic?) 
"whereof," he sapiently tells us, "one man is as good 4 as another," 
recommends in his last annual message to Congress, compulsory ed- 
ucation by the Federal Government ; and, with a logic, of which I 
will only say that it is worthy of its source, proposes to tax the 
church to support the school, backed in this latter matter, I regret 
to add, by the feeble support of the Governor of Virginia, it is 
high time that thoughtful men should bestir themselves, demand a 
new reckoning, and make the supreme effort, lest the ship of state 
drift into worse than Prussian absolutism. The fact that the Presi- 
dent makes such a proposition, and that, too, in the most solemn and 
formal way, ought to arouse us from our lethargy and make us open 
our eyes to the alarming drift and tendency of the times. It is noth- 
ing less than that the Federal Government should stretch out its 
Briarean arms from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, and from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific, and lay its cold and heavy hand upon all the 
children of "the nation," compelling them to schools supported by 
universal taxation, prescribing what they shall learn, and what they 
shall not learn, forbidding the reading of the Bible and the bare men- 
tion of the name of Christ, forming their minds and their morals, 
taking charge of their health and their habits, constituting itself a sort 



40 THE SOUTHERN [January 

of wet nurse to the little urchins, and leaving to parents, upon whom 
alone is devolved, as well by instinct and affection as by the repeated 
and most solemn injunctions of Inspiration, the education of their 
children, little more than the function of reproduction. Under such 
a system, the path to despotism is short and plain ; and we may ex- 
pect to see, as we most abundantly do see, wherever the scheme has 
been long intrenched and so' has had time to fructify, an utter relax- 
tion of parental and filial obligation and manifold forms of atheism 
and irreligion. But the Federal Government has as much right to 
intervene in this matter as the State Government ; it belongs to 
neither. The education of children belongs to parents and to them 
only ; nor can they delegate or surrender it to the civil authority, 
State or Federal, without guilt. 

But, it is maintained, that a necessity is laid upon Virginia to sup- 
port the public school because of the presence of negroes as citizens 
in our midst, whose equality is asserted by the law and maintained 
by the power of the Federal Government. 

Let us look into this. When an inferior and a superior race come 
into contact with each other, one of these three things will take 
place. 1st. The inferior race will disappear ; or 2d. The races will 
amalgamate; or 3d. The inferior race must submit, under forms 
more or less despotic, to the domination of the superior race. 

1. When Europeans landed on this continent their instincts de- 
manded that so vast and fertile a domain, pregnant with such mighty 
and brilliant possibilities, should not be left to the proprietorship of 
wild savages, incompetent to cultivate the soil or explore the mine. 
They were but cumberers of the ground, and must give way to those 
who could utilize the gifts of nature to the general benefit of man- 
kind. On the other hand, the proud spirit of the haughty Indian, 
after many a* bloody protest, it is true, sullenly recognized the in- 
evitable logic of this demand, and so he has constantly retired before 
the advancing wave of civilization. Taught by instinct, he felt that 
he. was unable to compete, for the means of living, with a race whose 
superior sagacity moulded the forms and bent the forces of nature 
to their will. Thus, the mighty tribes that once lorded it over this 
continent, following the course of the sun, and vanishing, as they re- 
tired, like April snows, are represented now in our western wilds by 
only a few degraded and broken spirited remnants, the miserable 
victims of the cruel charity of the Government — for governmental 
charity is always cruel, and corrupting too — famishing on fibrous 
beef, and poisoned with putrid pork. As the tide of life moves 
farther westward, the Indian, as heretofore, must abandon his reser- 
vation, and soon his only place will be in history. This is one method 
of solution, which we have witnessed with our own eyes, and, so sure 
as the laws of nature are constant, w T e shall witness it again, unless 
we change the hideous policy to which we are committed. 

2. Under favoring circumstances and conditions, the races will amal- 
gamate. Nature implants in the superior race antagonisms and antipa- 
thies to the inferior, which, except under abnormal circumstances, effec- 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 41 

tually protects the purity of its strain. The greater the disparity, the 
stronger these antipathies, and therefore the less the liability to amal- 
gamation. But how great soever the disparity, amalgamation is inevi- 
table under certain conditions, as where the inferior race vastly out- 
numbers the superior, or when the two races are kept together by ex- 
ternal force. The amalgamation of the blacks and whites — a crime 
against blood and lineage, against man and God, against which I 
raise my hands in horror and disgust, and exonerate my conscience, if 
I can do no more, by a solemn and indignant protest — is encouraged 
and invited by the law, which recognizes the political equality of the 
negro, and ties the races together in the bonds of political partner- 
ship. 

If the negro, as the law assumes, is equal to the great functions 
of citizenship, is a copartner with us in a common government, to 
discharge the same duties, meet the same responsibilities, and share 
the same destiny, then the races ought to assimilate as thoroughly as 
possible, and every bar to their perfect blending ought to be removed. 
Mixed schools, which we barely escaped — if, indeed, we have escaped 
— only because race instinct, though weakened and blinded by the 
hot passions born of strife and blood, was stronger than the logic of 
the law, in which the same training and instructions should be given 
and antagonisms worn off by constant contact and association, is the 
necessary, the logical demand of 'the doctrine of equality. Nor let 
us deceive ourselves by saying that political equality is one thing 
and social equality another. An adjective will not save us. Equal- 
ity is equality. If the negro is fit, as the law in question declares 
he is, to make laws for the control of our conduct and property ; to 
give orders as a colonel or general, which we must implicitly obey ; . 
to sit in senatorial robes ; to wear the spotless ermine ; to occupy 
the chair of Washington, he is certainly fit to eat with us at our 
tables, to sleep in our beds, to be invited into our parlors, and to do 
all acts and things which a white man may do. 

The intent and animus of the law, the pressure of the whole ma- 
chinery of the Federal Government, and of the State Government 
too, in so far as it recognizes the equality of the negro in its insane 
attempts to qualify him by education for the rights and duties of citi- 
zenship, tend to a* common point, viz., to wear off race antagonisms by 
contact and association, to pave the way consequently to assimilation 
and amalgamation, and thus degrade into mulattoes and molungeons, 
the noblest type of the noblest race that ever floated on the tide of time. 
No thanks to the law if this result does not promptly and fully en- 
sue. It is as criminal as if miscegenation were the order of the day; 
for it plies all its logic and displays all its seductions to effect that 
object, from which we are saved, in so far as we are saved, only by 
those antagonisms and antipathies of race, stronger than human 
legislation, implanted in us by our Maker to protect purity of blood 
and accomplish the "survival of the fittest." 

If it be suid in reply that this very principle of race antagonism 
is an effectual bar to hybridization, I answer : 



42 THE SOUTHERN [ Ja ™ary 

1. That if such be the tendency of the law, it must produce its 
effect ; that it is as impossible to annihilate a force in morals as it is 
to annihilate a force in physics ; that the law makes its fiercest as- 
saults upon the very principle which is relied upon to combat or 
modify its tendencies, and that this principle is liable to be so weak- 
ened and emasculated by the varied appliances operating against it, 
as to be unable at last to antagonize the baleful tendencies of the 
law. The law, however weak in comparison with the antagonizing 
principle, must produce its effects, which will become more manifest 
and more disastrous as the law becomes stronger and the opposing 
principle weaker. And this is exactly the tendency of things. As 
we submit to this legislation, and applaud and adopt it, its power over 
us becomes greater and our repugnance less to it and to its results, 
so that a time may come when, both from the increasing strength of the 
law and the growing weakness of human virtue, our race may be 
hopelessly ruined. 

2. Beware how you subject human nature to temptation. For us, 
as weak as we are sinful, the only safe philosophy is found in the 
prayer of our Saviour^ "Lead us not into temptation." How dare 
we support and sanction a law which daily displays before society 
and our children a constant temptation to corruption of blood ? It 
is a crime against decency and morals, against race and blood, 
against God and nature. 

If we are not utterly debauched by the temptation, the law is not 
the less criminal ; for we are saved, so far as we are saved, by a 
principle outside of the law, antagonistic to it, the eradication of 
which is the supreme object of the law, and of those who conceived 
and framed it. 

But we have no option, we are told, except submission. I reply 
that we can submit without guilt to any thing that we cannot pre- 
vent ; but that when we adopt, and applaud and defend this law, 
and, with superserviceable weakness, extend its application, we are 
as guilty, we are more guilty than its original framers. And this 
thing, and nothing else, we are doing, when we go to the exhausted 
Exchequer of the Commonwealth, and take* from it money — money 
that does not belong to the State, but to its creditors — and apply it to 
the support of the public school that the asserted cfoctrine of negro 
equality may be made good. In this we cannot offer the plea of 
compulsion ; no federal law requires it ; we do it of our own volition; 
and in doing it, we grant that the negro is competent to political 
sovereignty and endeavor to prepare him for it ; and thus we com- 
mit ourselves to the dogma of negro equality and become respon- 
sible for all its hideous consequences. This law, born of blood, 
is destined to die, as the passions engendered by war subside, unless 
we adopt it and approve it, and so infuse new life into it, and pro- 
ceed with supreme guilt and folly to incorporate it into our State 
legislation. Shall we do it ? God forbid. 

3. A third course has been indicated, the discussion* of which is 
reserved for another article. Civis. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 43 

[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

ON THE USE OF PLASTER OR SULPHATE OF LIME. 

In my article on Commercial Fertilizers, published in your 
October No., (the views in which I am pleased to see endorsed by 
" Henrico" in your last,) I promised to write you on the subject of 
Plaster as a Fertilizer. I have been prevented doing so before, by 
constant employment. I will begin by saying it is a subject that I 
do not believe any agriculturist fully understands. I confess that I 
do not, and can only give you my experience and crude views on 
the subject for what they are worth. I have been using plaster for 
thirty years, and of late years as much as 100 tons a year ; some- 
times with no perceptible benefit, generally with good results, and 
frequently remarkable, equal to that of Peruvian guano — depend- 
ing, in my opinion, (now that I have more experience.) on the 
quality of the article and the fineness of its grinding. Using plas- 
ter so largely, five years ago I bought a mill near me, and have 
been grinding from 2,000 to 3,000 tons a year for sale, and find that 
all the plaster that is imported from Nova Scotia and all that is 
called the Blue Windsor, is not of the same quality. The best, of 
course, is pure sulphate of lime, but much of it has a large propor- 
tion of silica in it, and much baryta, and is, consequently, less 
valuable as a fertilizer. Of the many quarries now worked in Nova 
Scotia, there are only three, of my knowledge, that are valuable, and 
one of them of much better quality than the other two, and there 
are some the' plaster from which I would not go to the labor of 
sowing if it were delivered to me free of charge. Hence I believe 
are the various opinions as to the value or worthlessness of plaster 
by farmers, and it is impossible to tell, after it is ground, of what 
quality the rock was. Then plaster is generally ground too coarse; 
it should be as fine as flour, if possible, so that it will more readily 
dissolve. I will say presently what I mean by dissolving. 

Now, as to my experiments in the use of it. Before the war the 
benefit was more perceptible than since, I believe because then the 
farmer selected his choice of rock ; it was ground in the country 
mills and ground fine. All the mills in this section being burnt 
during the war most of the plaster is ground now by steam mills 
and ground entirely too coarse and of every sort of plaster-rock 
they can buy, thinking it all equally good. I have used it on all 
the grasses, and on wheat, corn and oats, and find it beneficial to 
all when of good quality and properly applied. I have seen the 
most marked results on clover, next on sod land. On wheat it should 
be applied as soon as it comes up in the fall or early winter ; if ap- 
plied in spring it is apt to keep it too green and make it more liable 
to rust ; on sod land, any time in the winter or early spring ; on 
clover, early in the spring, as soon as it begins to cover the ground ; 
on corn, after the last plowing, just when the corn is laid aside. I 
think plaster should always be applied on the surface, never under 
the ground, unless mixed with some fertilizer containing ammonia, 



44 THE SOUTHERN [January 

then it may be beneficial to prevent the too rapid escape of the am- 
monia, as in drilling Peruvian guano with wheat. I believe plaster 
is beneficial to all soils, but more particularly on land where there is 
much vegetable matter decomposing. I had been told it was worth- 
less in our Tidewater section. Five years ago I sent ten tons to 
my farm in Essex Co., Va., on the Rappahannock river, (plaster 
manufactured in Baltimore,) it had no perceptible effect, nor was I 
surprised, when I saw a remnant of it that was left, it was as coarse 
as sand. Last year I sent thirty tons to the same farm — ground 
fine at my mill — of rock that I knew to be the best, and the effect 
is very marked, almost as distinct as would have been an application 
of 100 pounds of Peruvian guano. I have seen a part of a clover 
field unsown and persons passing would ask why I did not sow the bal- 
ance of the field in clover, when it was all well set alike, but a part 
had no plaster on it. I have seen stripes in corn as far as you could 
see the field, where the plaster was sown being a foot or two taller 
and several shades darker green than where it missed. I have also 
frequently seen no effect whatever from its use. Formerly I thought 
its action owing to peculiar seasons : I still think the season has a 
great deal to do with it, but more the quality of the plaster. 

Now, as to how plaster acts, no chemist or agriculturist agrees. 
I have a mere smattering of chemistry, but will have to use the little 
I have to help out my experience and observation, and out of the 
combination give you my crude ideas., The best plaster is the 
purest sulphate of lime, that is, sulphuric acid and lime. Pure sulphate 
of lime, (not combined with silica and baryta,) when finely ground 
and distributed over the land may act thus : the sulphuric acid, 
having a greater affinity for ammonia than for lime, will let go the 
lime and unite with the ammonia contained in rain, more particularly 
in snow, which is said to contain more ammonia than rain, and 
especially with the ammoniacal and nitrogenous vapors arising from 
decomposing vegetable matter — of which there is a great deal the 
first warm weather in spring — forming sulphate of ammonia, which, 
being soluble in water, is taken up by the plant as food, or stimu- 
lant if you please, but if a stimulant, is so by utilizing the escaping 
ammonia from vegetable matter, rain and snow, which would other- 
wise be lost; 'the lime left free, and though in small quantities, does 
its part in producing chemical changes in the soil and vegetable 
matter. This is what I believe is the "dissolving" of plaster. If 
correct you see the necessity of fine grinding in plaster, and that it 
should be pure sulphate of lime uncombined with anything else, 
and the greater redundancy of sulphuric acid the better. If this 
theory be true, then the best plaster will act, and I believe does act, 
on all soils, especially where there is much decomposition of vege- 
table matter. 

Mr. Editor, this may be all theory, but it is certain that all farm- 
ers, experienced in the use of plaster, know that there are different 
kinds of it ; that the kind which gives out the strongest sulphuric 
acid smell in grinding, has the best effect on vegetation ; that some 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 45 

plaster, in some seasons at least, has no perceptible effect ; that 
sometimes the effect is greater than at others, and sometimes equal to 
that of Peruvian guano ; that if it is thrown over or mixed in a fer- 
menting dung-pile, it at once stops the strong pungent smell, which is 
the escape of ammonia, and thus preserves the manure. These are 
farmers' facts, and not theory, and chemists will tell you there is 
great difference in the analysis of different kinds of plaster-rock, all 
from Nova Scotia. Then I claim that the best plaster, properly 
ground, is the best fertilizer we can use for its cost. And, as I said 
in the Piedmont and Tidewater Farmer, bone lime, and plaster are 
the only fertilizers (always excepting our own home manures, which 
are best of all) that will pay the farmer in the "long run." Having 
already made this article too long, I will only say in addition that I 
usually apply from 100 to 150 pounds plaster to the acre. 

Fauquier Co., Va. Robt. Beverley. 

Note by the Editor. — Col. Beverly's opinion, as to the reasons underlying 
the action of plaster, is exactly corroborated by the learned Liebi®, and he, the 
father of agricultural chemistry, was certainly worthy to express an opinion in 
this line. Necessity is the great creatoj, and now that it presses our people at 
so many points, we are not surprised at the inquiry so apparent everywhere 
throughout the State. As we have before observed, there is no sign of the 
times fuller of solid hope than this desire of the farming community to get at 
the reasons of their business ; for they must produce the best returns with the 
least expenditure of money. Col. Beverly is so thorougly posted in the agricul- 
ture and capabilities generally of his region that we trust he will not abate his 
efforts, so auspiciously begun, but, from time to time, let his brother farmers 
he/fr the results of his experience, observation and study. 



LORD KINC AID'S EXPERIMENT WITH STABLE MANURE 
KEPT UNDER COVER AND EXPOSED. 

Lord Kincaid, a Scotch land owner and farmer, had the good sense 
to learn by direct experiment the relative value of stable manure, kept 
some months under shelter and protected from all rain or snow, and 
similar manure exposed to the weather in a way once very common in 
Great Britain, and still not very uncommon in the United States. 
Four acres of good soil were measured, two of them were manured 
with ordinary barn-yard manure, and two with an equal quantity of 
manure from a covered shed. The whole was planted with potatoes. 
The product of each acre was as follows: 
. Potatoes treated with barn-yard manure: 

One acre produced 272 bushels. 

Another acre produced 272 bushels. 

Potatoes manured from the covered sheds : 

One acre produced 442 bushels. 

Another acre produced 471 bushels. 

The next year the land was sown with wheat, when the crop was as 
follows : 

Wheat on land treated with barn-yard manure : 

One acre produced forty-one bushels, eighteen pounds (of sixty-one 
pounds per bushel). 



46 THE SOUTHERN [January 

One acre produced forty-two bushels, thirty-eight pounds (of sixty-one 
pounds per bushel). 

Wheat on land manured from covered sheds: 

One acre produced fifty-five bushels, five pounds (of sixty-one pounds 
per bushel. 

One acre produced fifty-eight bushels, forty-seven pounds (of sixty- 
one pounds per bushel). 

The straw also yielded one-third more upon the land fertilized with the 
manure from the covered stalls, than ' upon that to which the ordinary 
manure was applied. 

The Nashville American concludes its remarks upon the above by say- 
ing, that the salts saved, my merely sheltering manure, gave Lord Kin- 
caid about one hundred bushels of potatoes more to the acre than he 
would have raised without the shelter. Even in the next crop of wheat 
the gain was nearly fourteen bushels. The best plant food is often vola- 
tile, and always soluble in water. It is easily lost by a stupid man, 
who takes no pains to raise full crops of grain, vegetables, cotton or 
fruit. To make a poor article of manure, and waste two-thirds of that, 
is calculated to^bring manure making on the farm into disrepute. Learn 
to produce manure worth more per one hundred pounds than good hay. 
Concentrate fertility as you would j^ring the rays of the sun to a focus 
in a sun-glass. 

Note by the Editor. — Not a few of our folks in the South not only expose 
their stable manure to the action of the elements, but actually mix lime ivith it ! 
These two operations render it almost absolutely valueless. Stable manure has 
been examined thoroughly by men not less famous than Lawes, Gilbert, Voelc* 
ker, Huxtable, Way, Ville and Goessmann, and none of them succeeded :n get- 
ting as much as fifty pounds to the ton of what are universally accepted as indis- 
pensable elements of plant food, namely : ammonia, phosphoric acid, and po%sh. 
Now, if it is allowed to decompose at pleasure, and be subjected to washing rains, 
these valuable elements will very probably all wash away ; and when lime is 
added, if any ammonia has been left, it will be at once expelled. We have 
urged, again and again, that no farmer can possibly know too much about his 
business ; and yet we see that ignorance of the simplest elements of science in. 
volves to him, every year, the loss of hundreds of dollars in deficient crops from 
material that ought to give him a bountiful return. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 
ABOUT FENCES. 
I have been greatly annoyed several times to fall upon some plan 
by which I could always keep the first panel of a staked fence on 
each side of a gate or bars in as good repair as the other panels of 
the fence, but never succeeded in doing so until a few days ago. It 
is this : instead of having a cap and single pair of stakes, as we 
usually find at the end of rails next to the gate, &c, have two pairs 
of stakes and cap to each pair, placed four to six inches from each 
other, then rocks or blocks placed between the ends of the rails, and 
also between these two stakes, will remain there a long time, and of 
course cause that part of the panel to be kept as high as the other 
parts of the fence. Studley. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 47 

TENNESSEE'S EXAMPLE TO VIRGINIA. 

The State of Tennessee has given to the world the " Introduction to the Re- 
sources of Tennessee,' 1 '' a volume of 1200 pages, accompanied by geological, crop 
and transportation maps, and giving a description of what every county in the 
State has to exhibit in the way of lands, timber, mines — indeed, everything that 
an immigrant would like to know. It is the work of its Bureau of Agriculture, 
Statistics and Mines, of which Dr. J. B. Killebrew is chief. The work is an 
honor to the State, and has gone forth to foreign lands to show them what it has 
to offer to men ot energy and means who wish a field ample enough to give their 
talents the fullest scope. Dr. Killebrew, hearing that our State contemplated 
the arrangement of a similar bureau, addressed a letter to Mr. Ott, the Secretary 
of the Southern Fertilizing Company, on the subject. Mr. Ott has furnished us 
with the following extracts, which we are satisfied will prove interesting to every 
reader of the Planter and Farmer : 

" The time has come when the South can no longer be dependent 
upon the North without complete prostration. The habit of selling 
the very fatness of our soil, in the shape of raw material, year by 
year, and buying almost everything we use, from the hat on our 
heads to .the shoes on our feet — everything, from a cradle to a coffin, 
cannot be longer continued without making us slaves to the North 
almost as absolutely as the negroes were to us. We are indeed giv- 
ing the labor of three men for one, when we exchange the raw pro- 
duct for the finished article. Our prosperity must in the future 
depend upon a diversification of our industries. We need more in- 
dustrial talent, that can bridle the foaming rivulet and make it 
obedient to the will of man ; that can direct the operations of the 
forge, the furnace, and the rolling mill; that can subordinate all the 
forces of nature to man's use. We are vainly striving to make mus- 
cle compete with machinery, directed by intelligence. The fer capita 
productive capacity of each man, woman and child in Massachusetts 
is $1:00, excluding the gains of commerce; while in Tennessee it is 
$96, and in Virginia $74. In other words, each person in Massa- 
chusetts may spend as much as each person in Tennessee makes, 
and have $304 left, or as much as a citizen of Virginia, and have 
$326 to deposit in a savings bank. If the people of Virginia had 
the same training and the same natural forces at work, with all the 
diversity of manufactures, as the people of Massachusetts, they could 
have an annual income greater by nearly $400,000,000 ! a sum, I 
suppose, nearly double the value of all your taxable property. There 
can be but one remedy: we must have more skilled labor, and must 
cease to "sell a hide for a penny and buy back the tail for a shilling." 
We cannot be prosperous in the South as long as we pursue the pre- 
sent ruinous policy of giving all the benefits of the high protective 
tariff to the North. Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky pay at least 
$30,000,000 of the internal revenue of the country — -fully one-tenth — 
while they represent .only one-twentieth of the wealth of the United 
States. 

"I am rejoiced that you in Virginia are about to take one of the 
most important steps towards relieving yourselves of this state of 



48 THE SOUTHERN [January 

vassalage. Gather up the facts pertaining to your resources ; pub- 
lish them to the world; show your advantages in climate, in variety 
of productions, in the cheapness of your lands, in the value, extent 
and variety of your mineral wealth and timber, in the excellence of 
your great harbor, &c, &c, and you cannot fail to have an accession 
to your population which will turn all these now mere possibilities 
into tangible wealth, and make old Virginia, my fatherland, whose 
very name I venerate, bright, as of yore, with intellectual and mate- 
rial splendor." 

A BROAD VIEW OF THINGS AT HOME. 

An esteemed correspondent in Montgomery county, Va., in a private letter to 
us, says : 

" There is no reason why we should not have as good agricultural 
writing in Virginia as in any other portion of the country; for, as a 
class, our farmers are better educated than the majority of farmers 
in the other States. But, woe to us, ours too generally devote their 
best talents to local political matters, to the neglect of those vital in- 
terests that politics were intended merely to conserve. 

"If we cannot, as we ought to be, a manufacturing State and peo- 
ple, we should, by all means, be a thriving agricultural people, as we 
have all the advantages of climate and convenience to all the prin- 
cipal markets of the country. We must show ourselves to be a pro- 
ducing people before we can hope to have capitalists come among us 
to engage in manufacturing. The profits of manufacturing at this 
day frequently turns upon the facilities existing for the supply of 
necessaries without cost of transportation. 

"During my visits to Richmond in the last few years I have met 
several farmers from the North and West, who expressed to me their 
astonishment at seeing the vast amount of land lying idle around our 
capital, and between it and Petersburg. Indeed, it should be a mat- 
ter of surprise to any one to see land within gunshot of Capitol 
Square thrown out as commons, and the owners complaining of hard 
times. I do hope there is a better day coming for us, and I know 
of nothing that will aid its advance more than the efforts the Planter 
and Farmer is making to disseminate among the people practical 
agricultural information and words of good cheer." 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

CORN-SHUCKING. 

Why is it that farmers will continue to pay the negro ten cents* 
per barrel to shuck their corn when there is little or no expense 
attending that operation? Let the corn be "slip-shucked" as it is 
gathered and thrown into the crib. This can be done with safety 
three weeks earlier than when it is shucked. The rats do not injure 
it anything like so much, and there is not that vile scent upon it 
caused by them. It is the best plan upon earth to keep weavil from 
it, and in fact there are many reasons why it should be so housed. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 49 

When you wish to prepare the crop for market or the mill, pass it 
through the corn sheller and through your wheat fan, with the chaffer 
only in it, and there you have your corn shelled, shucked and cured, 
and your shucks hackled and ready for your stock, than which 
nothing is better for them, always provided you have them slightly 
impregnated with water, into which you have cast a modicum of 
salt. What pleasure to see them eat it, all the time remembering 
that you have in your pocket $10 save upon every 100 barrels of 
corn you may have made, which would have gone into the pocket of 
some low vender of lightning, who always manages to clean out 
every negro to whom the farmer pays money. 

Spotsylvania Co. Granger. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

INJURY TO TOBACCO PLANT BEDS BY FLIES. 

A REMEDY. 

[The following article appeared in this journal in 1854, and at 
the request of a friend we reproduce it. We have arranged to have a 
series of articles, by the best tobacco growers in Virginia, on the cu- 
tivation of tobacco from the plant bed to its delivery to market. Ed.] 

"The ravages of the fly on the tobacco plant beds of Eastern Vir- 
ginia have so much increased of late years as to call for a more 
certain preventive or remedy than any heretofore suggested. A 
first, and sometimes a second series of plants is devoured by the 
insects, and before a third can attain a growth sufficient for trans- 
plantation, the early seasons have passed. The loss occasioned by 
the delay alone in planting must have been immense ; and during 
the present year many growers of tobacco wholly failed in occupying 
a part of their hills made for that purpose. 

"During a recent visit to the county of Amherst, I met with Mr. 
James W. Phillips, an intelligent citizen and planter of that county, 
with whom I conversed at large on the best modes of rearing and 
managing tobacco. From him I learned that he was in possession 
of a remedy against the fly, which he had tried with unvarying suc- 
cess for thirteen years past, with the exception of one year, when 
no flies appeared. He had not divulged it before, but is willing that 
it should be made public now ; and as it is both simple and cheap, I 
send for publication in the Planter a copy of what was written 
down from his dictation. 

" 'As soon as the cattle are taken in from grazing and put up for 
winter feeding, as we may be certain that their manure will be free 
from grass seeds, a quantity of this is collected and stored in several 
barrels. Old flour or lime barrels will answer the purpose. Over each 
layer of eight or ten inches thickness, pour water until it is moistened 
through and then sprinkle a handful or two of slaked lime. About 

4 



50 THE SOUTHERN [January 



four or five handfuls generally suffice for a barrel. These are either 
to be kept under shelter or covered during wet weather. As soon 
as the fly makes its appearance — which is generally from the last 
week in March to the middle of April — sprinkle the mixture, which 
will be now thoroughly pulverized, over the beds so as nearly to 
cover the plants. The flies will cease to trouble them and the 
manure will stimulate their growth as well or better than any other 
he has ever tried.' 

"Mr. P. covers his beds with brush, as is the general custom, 
and rather thicker than usual ; but never removes it entirely until 
shortly before the plants are drawn. He thinks it better to have 
two layers of brush, one across the other, as in case the plants are 
too much shaded, the second may be removed without disturbing the 
first, and thus injuring the plants. 

" The remedy here proposed may not be as new to all your read- 
ers as it was to myself, but I doubt if it be generally known, and 
Mr. Phillips assures me that, as thus compounded, it is original with 
him. I have heard of liquid manure, or a weak solution of guano, 
or the brine of fish being poured over the beds — of lime or plaster 
of Paris, either singly or successively, sprinkled over the plants — 
but not with uniform results. It has been said that if brush fires 
be kindled at night to the leeward of the beds the flies will be 
attracted by the flames. Recent observers of the habits of these 
insects also tell us that they rarely or never rise more than three feet 
from the ground, and that beds enclosed by a tight plank fence of that 
height will keep them out. Of the efficacy of either of these modes 
I know nothing ; but the first, I suppose, would be but temporary, 
and the other both troublesome and expensive. Mr. P's continued 
success was attested by several of his neighbors, and his preparation 
may be considered worthy of trial by many others during the com- 
ing season. Should it prove equally efficacious under a variety of 
circumstances, he will have entitled himself to the thanks of our 
planters generally, and perhaps to some more solid testimonial of 
their obligations. 

"Nelson, Dec. 7, 1853. "N. F. Cabell." 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

DITCHING. 

In ditching I should find no use for a "mud scraper," but where 
the clay is too stiff to use the spade, there is economy in breaking it 
up with the coulter, and some advantage in removing it with the 
scraper in common use on roads. 

Since I have occasion to recur to the subject of ditching, I may 
be pardoned a few remarks on the principle, novel to me, expressed 
by your correspondent, "Southside," in, as I remember, these words: 
"It is a well-known fact to all practical farmers, that a straight ditch 
will fill up sooner than a crooked one." 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 51 

Now, if there is anything in the world my reason clearly teaches 
me, and my experience as a "practical farmer " confirms, it is that 
a straight ditch, other things being equal, will and must keep open 
longer than a crooked one. That a ditch, cut straight where the lay 
of the land demands a crooked one, will fill up, is readily granted; 
but here we have another element introduced; it is no longer a con- 
test between straight and crooked. 

Having mistaken mere coincidence for cause and effect (post hoc 
for propter hoc, if you'll excuse the Latin), "Southside" has to in- 
vent a queer philosophy in explanation of his assumed phenomenon. 
It amounts to this : A ditch may fill up because it has too much fall. 
The current will be strong enough to bear with it large quantities of 
sand, which becomes deposited in bars wherever the current is checked. 
But there is a medium grade, sufficient to move mud indeed, but not 
sand, and the mud will pass off and form no bars. This does not 
square with my experience. I have never seen a stream, not even a 
canal for navigation, with so little fall that it had not strength to 
move sand when swollen. And both reason and observation teach 
me that every current of water, whether impetuous enough to move 
stones, or so sluggish as to move only silt, when it is cheeked, deposits 
its drifts, be it what it may. People ditch streams, in great part, to 
make them straight, and call it "straightening." But other con- 
siderations induce them to put up with an approximation to straight- 
ness. The location must also approximate the lowest land, for the 
lowest land defines the course of the freshets, and it is the freshets 
breaking out of the channel or rushing across it at low places that 
cause the deposition of sand and other debris, by checking the current 
along the ditch. It is not often a straight ditch can be cut without 
being exposed to these cross currents. Then it is apt to be filled up. 
But if it has plenty of fall, so soon as the current is again confined 
within the banks the new-formed bar is swept out, and when the 
stream subsides to its usual tide no obstacle remains. I have often 
seen this process going on. But when the fall is barely sufficient to 
carry the water, the course of the ordinary and of the flood- tide must 
strictly coincide, for any washing across the stream would fill it up 
irretrievably. If I am wrong in these notions, please set me right; 
but if right, my t>nly object is to guard against that embarrassment 
to correct practice, even in plain cases, which is apt to result from 
the adoption of false principles. In the main, I endorse the views 
and applaud the object of your correspondent. T. P. L. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

GRAPES AND WINE, 

By Louis Ott, of Nelson County. 

No. II. 

VIRGINIA AS A GRAPE AND WINE COUNTRY. 

Grapes are raised either for the purpose of selling them 

table fruit, or for manufacturing them, into wine and brandy. 



.- f 



52 THE SOUTHERN [January 

The selliug of grapes as a table fruit is a paying business only in 
localities which are situated near the cities, or on the lines of rail- 
roads leading to the cities. But even in these localities only early 
varieties are profitable, as the price of grapes is falling very low 
when peaches are coming into the market. Grapes being a perisha- 
ble article they must be sold as soon as they reach the market, with- 
out regard to the condition of the market. I have seen ship loads 
of grapes thrown overboard into the Hudson river at New York, 
which were unsalable on account of the glutted market. 

The most natural and safest way of converting a grape crop into 
money is to manufacture it into wine and brandy, but this business 
can never, for several reasons, be carried on in connection with the 
sale of grapes as a table fruit. A first-class wine grape is rarely 
eligible for the table, and those grapes which are excellent in dessert 
make generally very indifferent wine. Only early grapes pay as 
fruit, while they never make good wine, like early apples never make 
good cider, early table fruit being always deficient in some respects. 
The season in which early grapes ripen is too warm for the manu- 
facture of wine, in consequence of which the fermentation of the 
must is too rapid and violent, which is injurious to the quality of 
wine. It is furthermore not to be expected that a good wine can be 
manufactured out of a crop of grapes, the better part of which was 
picked out for selling as a table fruit. The only way of combining 
the selling of grapes and making wine is to have a separate grape- 
lot of early varieties for the first purpose, and leave the vineyard 
untouched for making wine. 

The medicinal properties of the grape, and particularly the fact 
that grapes are the best remedy against dyspepsia, a disease which 
in no other country is found more frequently than in the United 
States, are highly appreciated in Europe. Thousands of visitors, 
and among them a great many Americans, are to be found every 
year in the famous establishments which are carried on for the grape 
cure at Meran (South Tyrol), Nice (Piedmont), Duerkheim (Rhenish 
Bavaria), and other places. This offers another chance to make the 
cultivation of grapes very profitable in localities which are favored 
by nature with the requirements of a summer resort. I call the at- 
tention of those gentlemen from Richmond who recently bought the 
Mountain Top House, near Afton, to that matter ; this delightful 
place, on which a considerable vineyard is already in operation, 
being pre-eminently suited for that purpose, and declare myself will- 
ing to give them any further information about it, if they call on me 
to do so. 



THE FRENCH WINE CROP IN 1875. 

The Journal des Dsbats says that the summer solstice was marked 
by wet, showery weather, which was followed by continuous sun- 
shine, presenting, on the w T hole, a remarkably good season for the 
maturity of the fruit and the excellence of the wine product. The 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 53 

noted wines of Bordelais and Burgundy promise their usual stand- 
ard. In Central France, Lower Burgundy, and Champagne there 
has rarely been in the past a promise of larger yield than during the 
present year. Vine-growers in this region confess themselves per- 
fectly satisfied. In the South the damage from inundation, though 
serious, was not so great as was at first stated. The prolific yields 
of the past few years have placed the vine-growers in comparatively 
easy circumstances. On the whole, the French wine product will be 
abundant, and at least of medium quality ; it will probably reach 
60,000,000 hectoliters, or 1,585,060,000 gallons, worth, at 20 francs 
per hectoliter, §240,000,000. France exports wines to the amount 
of 250,000,000 francs per annum, but this represents less than one- 
tenth of the home consumption in a productive year. About one- 
tenth of the total product is used for the manufacture of brandy, 
and scarcely 1 per cent, for vinegar. Yet this mighty productive in- 
terest stands aghast at the ravages of the Phylloxera, which threat- 
ens to undermine its prosperity. 

The Paris correspondent of the Mark Lane Express estimates the 
French vintage at 80,000,000 hectoliters, (2,11-3,424,000 gallons.) 
The distribution is quite unequal. The floods in the South have cut 
down the crop, while in the interior the yield is above an average. 

The vineyards of France cover 4.27 per cent, of her area, and 
are found in all the departments except ten. This culture has no- 
tably increased since 1788, when from 3,873,943, acres 132,088,000 
gallons of wine were produced, averaging nearly 35 gallons per acre. 
In 1873 the acreage had risen to 4,975,842, and the production to 
943,528,080 gallons, averaging 189 gallons per acre. The most 
abundant year, 1875, yields about 2,113,000,000 gallons, while 
1854, the poorest of late years, yielded only 285,044,601 gallons. 
In 1806 the average price was 20 cents per gallon; in 1873, 41J- 
cents. In 1837 the importation of common wines amounted to only 
14,318 gallons, valued at $4,442, and the exports to 31,224,281 
gallons valued at $8,503,694. In 1873 the imports amounted to 
15,976,303 gallons, valued at $4,913,448, and the exports to 106,- 
652,195 gallons, valued at $55,453,249. Wines are imported mostly 
from Spain, Italy and Germany. The bulk of the export goes to 
England, Belgium, the United States, Germany, and Algeria and 
other French colonies. 

Note by the Editor. — The above summary we extract from the December 
report of the United States Commissioner of Agriculture. That Department is 
gaining in the public esteem with a rapidity i's honest efforts to arrive at facts 
so richly deserve. To return to the wine question : we see that less than one- 
twentieth (4.27 per cent.) of the area of France produces something worth 
$240,000,000. We in Virginia have the same natural advantages as France in 
respect of all the elements essential to the cultivation of the vine. Will we 
allow such a capability to remain barren of fruit a single moment longer than we 
can help? If the "Bureau of Agriculture, Statistics and Mines" were estab- 
lished, the facts in this behalf could be collected and presented, with absolute 
exactness, to the attention of the French people ; and who can doubt of a re- 
sponse? Their skill and experience, transplanted to Virginia, would enable us 
to compete successfully with their mother country in the markets of the world. 



54 THE SOUTHERN [January 

HOW GRAPES ARE PRESSED IN SPAIN. 

All the finer qualities of the pale, delicate, dry, tonical tasting 
wine known as Manzanilla are vintages in the neighborhood of San 
Lucar, just as the finer Amontillados are the produce of the Jerez 
district. As the vineyards of Torre Breva enjoy the reputation of 
yielding a superior wine of the former character, we carefully fol- 
lowed the vinification of it from the beginning to the end. The 
pressing of the grapes commenced between seven and eight o'clock 
in the evening, and was accomplished in a detached building under 
a low tiled roof, but entirely open in front. Passing through the 
gateway, and stumbling in the dim light afforded by an occasional 
lamp fixed against the wall over a rudely paved court yard, we 
found ourselves beside a row of large, stout wooden troughs, some 
ten feet square and a couple of feet deep, raised about three feet 
from the ground, and known in the vernacular of the vineyard as 
lagares. The bottoms of these receptacles were already strewn with 
grapes lightly sprinkled over with yeso (gypsum), which, if spread 
over the whole of the bunches, would not have been greatly in ex- 
cess of the amount of dust ordinarily gathered by that large quan- 
tity of grapes conveyed in open baskets on the backs of mules from 
the vineyards to the pressing places in the towns. Rising perpen- 
dicularly in the center of each of the four lagares to a height of 
about seven feet is a tolerably powerful screw, which is only brought 
into requisition after the grapes have been thoroughly trodden. A 
couple of swarthy, bare-legged pesadores leap into each lagar and 
commence spreading out the bunches of grapes with wooden shovels ; 
and soon eight of them, in their short drawers, blue striped shirts, 
little caps, and ^club-nailed shoes, are dancing a more or less lively 
measure, ankle deep in newly crushed grapes. They dance in cou- 
ples, one each side of the screw, performing certain rapid pendulum- 
like movements which are supposed to have the virtue of expressing 
the juice more satisfactorily from the grapes than can be accom- 
plished by mechanical means. Their dancing ended, 'the trodden 
grapes are heaped up on one side and well patted about with the 
shovel, like so much newly mixed mortar. This causes the ex- 
pressed juices to flow 'Out in a dingy brown turgid stream through 
the spout fixed in front of the lagar, and after being duly danced 
upon are shoveled on one side, and this kind of thing goes on until 
sufficient trodden murk has been accumulated to make what is called 
the pile. The pesadores now retire in favor of the tiradores or 
presses, who, springing into the lagares, collect all the trodden 
grapes together and skilfully build them, by the aid of wooden 
shovels and that readier implement, the hand, in a compact mass 
around the screw, just as an expert plasterer would build up a cir- 
cular column of Compo. The form taken by this in the first instance, 
owing to the weight of the murk, is necessarily conical. Conse- 
quently the base has to be neatly trimmed and the detached frag- 
ments built round the upper part of the column until this attains a 
height of some five feet. When perfected it is bound round with a 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 55 

long band of esparto about four inches wide, from base to summit, 
and a flat wooden slab being placed on the top, with the nut of the 
screw immediately above it, the handles of the screw are rapidly 
turned, causing the juice to exude between the interstices of the 
esparto. For the first few minutes the labor is light enough. Pres- 
ently, however, it becomes severe, and, although the pressers strain 
with all their might, they can only succeed in turning the nut by 
a series of successive jerks which necessitate the binding of their 
hands to the handle in case, when exerting their utmost strength, 
they should lose their hold of it, together with their footing on the 
slippery floor of the lagar. This treading and pressing of grapes 
goes on nightly for fourteen hours, with occasional intervals for re- 
freshments, until the end of the vintage, lasting together for sixteen 
days. 

. [For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

SYMPHYTUM ASPERRIMUM. 

Experiencing the great want in this State of some good fodder 
plant, I was induced to place myself in communication with a gen- 
tleman in Europe who has devoted many years to this subject, and 
who has, after considerable expense of time and money, succeeded in 
introducing the above named plant into pretty general notice in 
France, Germany and England, where it is daily becoming more 
appreciated and valued. 

The common name of this plant is Prickly Comfrey. There are 
several varieties of Symphytum indigenous to Great Britain, but none 
of them are of much value for feeding purposes; but the true Sym- 
phytum asperrimum is a native of the Caucasus, and produces enor- 
mous crops of the best fodder, which, both in the green and dry state, 
is greedily eaten by horses, cows, sheep, pigs and poultry. 

The culture of comfrey is simple and inexpensive. The ground is 
dug or plowed six or eight inches deep, and well manured at the 
same time. The crowns, or root cuttings, are then planted like 
potato sets, three feet apart. In winter the roots should be well 
dressed with farm-yard manure or sewage. 

The comfrey, when dried into hay, makes good food for all kinds 
of stock, and the branches and leaves, made into bundles, are excel- 
lent for winter feed. The juice of the plant contains much gum and 
mucilage, but very little sugar. Cattle fed upon this plant are free 
from the ravages of lung and foot and mouth diseases. Its curative 
properties have long been known. It has been noticed that the plant 
thrives in all kinds of soil and aspect. The leaves, as they reach 
maturity, are torn off without injury to the coming crop. It is a 
hardy and free grower, the roots taking firm hold of the soil. After 
being once established they are difficult to eradicate, and the leaves, 
which are most abundant, can be gathered from the beginning of 
May to the first frosts without injury to the plant. 

C. E. ASHBURNER. 

Note by the Editor. — We know nothing of the above plant, but publish it as 
an item of inierest. Mr. A. is an intelligent Englishman and a good farmer, liv- 
ng in Henrico county, near Richmond. 



56 THE SOUTHERN [January 




[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

IMPROVE YOUR STOCK. 

There is no fact in agriculture so fully established as that it will not 
pay to keep scrub stock on the farm. The cost of keeping an inferior 
cow is the same as that of a good one. A good horse will always bring 
more money, and is more valuable to his owner than a poor one. The 
cost of the keeping is precisely the same. Why should our farmers raise 
steers that at four years old will not weigh over 1110 lbs. and bring but 
$55 per head ; when by simply using a thoroughbred bull upon their 
native cows they can raise steers that at three years old. and with the 
same cost per annum, will weigh 1500 lhs. and bring $90 per head. We 
saw weighed on yesterday, a lot of twelve steers which had been raised 
together on the same farm, and had precisely the same treatment from 
calves up. Nine of the number were grade Shorthorns, the produce 
of a thoroughbred Shorthorn bull upon common cows ; and three were 
natives. The average weight of the grade Shorthorns was 1460 lbs. 
whilst that of the natives was 976 lbs. showing a difference in favor of 
the grade Shorthorns of 484 lbs., which, at 6 cents per pound, would 
amount to $29.04 per head ; but this is not all the difference; the former 
would command at least a cent per pound more than the latter upon any 
market, which would add $9.76 per head, or an aggregate of $37.80 per 
head in favor of the grade Shorthorns. This is not an isolated case, 
but is about the experience of aH who have ever handled Shorthorn 
cattle. 

It may be said that our farmers cannot afford to pay from $150 to 
$200 for a Shorthorn bull to breed upon native cows, but a glance at 
the above figures will show that it will not take the profits of six grade 
calves to pay for him, besides, he will bring from $75 to $100 at the 
butchers when no longer fit for service. Another source of profit would 
be the fine grade cows that could be raised from, which, by the contin- 
ued use of thoroughbred bulls for three or four generations, a class of 
cattle could be obtained scarcely distinguishable from thoroughbreds. 

To those who are prejudiced against the Shorthorn and fear that he is 
not adapted to the wants of the Virginia farmer (an idea which we know 
to be wholly unfounded), and who persist in advocating the merits of 
those " little uglies," the Jerseys, or of the more profitable and useful 
Devons ; as well as to those who insist upon following in the footsteps of 
their ancestors, and for fear that it might be termed a reflection upon 
their judgment hold on to the descendants of the "importation o/1607," 
we would say, by all means use a thoroughbred bull of whatever breed 
you believe to be best adapted to your particular wants. But whatever 
you do, abandon scrubs. 

Whatever is true of improved cattle as compared with natives, is true 
of improved swine and sheep as compared with the miserable "land 
pikes" and "grubbers" that now infest the majority of our old Virginia 
farms. At no period since the close of the late war has pork raising been 



1876.] 



PLANTER AND FARMER. 



57 




111 
Shorthorn— Property of A. M Bowman. 



58 THE SOUTHERN [January 

so remunerative as now, and judging from the large falling off of receipts 
at both Cincinnati and Chicago, and the almost general prevalence of 
cholera in the West, we would say the prospects are even better for the 
future. No farmer should be without a thoroughbred boar. The very 
best boar pigs can be had at $15, and bred even upon a scrub will soon 
pay for himself the first litter, besides bringing from $25 to $35 for pork 
when no longer fit for use. When our farmers are brought to see the 
great difference between improved pigs and the miserable scrubs now so 
common with us, the cry will no longer be heard that pork raising don't 
pay in Virginia, and western bacon will have to be shipped to some 
" other seaport " to find a market. 

In a future article we shall give some facts and figures showing the 
results of some crosses made with thoroughbred rams upon native ewes. 

Augusta County, Va. A. M. Bowman. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

WINTER CARE OF STOCK. 

The usual indifference in this latitude in housing and sheltering stock 
in winter is a grievous fault, and in these days of should be penny sav- 
ings, farmers cannot make a wiser improvement on the past, than looking 
to the improvement in the care and quality of their stock. 

Whatever breed of stock may be adopted, let it be good and well 
bred, and of a fixed type, and suited to the section and purposes it is 
intended for. For most purposes Shorthorns and their grades are best. 

Milch cows should be allowed a space of five feet wide and ten to 
eleven feet deep, or if in double stalls, of nine feet, and two in each, 
haltered to the corners, and their halters to allow them to feed in the 
trough, with a division midway, and the trough of roomy size to hold a 
good supply of food, with several bars across the top to avoid waste of 
food by each cow. The double stall of nine feet is better than single 
stalls of five feet, as there is more room for milking and feeding. 
Light, old, worn trace chains, two and a half feet long to the fork, with 
a T at one end and rings at the other, with a link between each of seve- 
ral rings to suit the size of the necks loosely should be used as halters. 

These temporary stalls may be made in various ways, and the shelters 
may be of straw or frame work rather than not at all. The buildings of 
the farm may suggest other plans for feeding and milking under shelter. 
The stalls should be littered and the droppings thrown out each morn- 
ing, and, if not too cold and stormy, let the stock out each day for ex- 
ercise and to graze old sods, if to be had near by. Forage cut up, is of 
advantage to the stock, and economy in its use, and meal and bran 
sprinkled on it, after dampening the cut food, renders the food more ac- 
ceptable to stock and beneficial to milk producing. 

Calves should be cared for and fed with bran or meal twice a day on 
thin cut food, and not allowed to get poor. The same is important in 
their yearling form, as they must be sustained at that early age, and it 
costs but little to keep their little frames. This also applies to weanling 
colts ; neither should they be crowded together, and of different ages. 

Older stock should be housed or sheltered as far as practicable, espe- 
cially in stormy weather, and so fed that each gets its share. Stock cattle 
may be sheltered from storms and falling weather by various cheap 
modes, and there is no better work done on a farm than uniform care of 



1876.J PLANTER AND FARMER. 59 

stock in winter, and it is astonishing how a little meal or bran will show 
a marked effect on young animals, in the better and earlier start they 
take in the spring. Even a gill of meal or bran to each calf on its for- 
age, cut up of chaff or sheaf oats, will show in a short time in the oily 
texture of their coats of hair. 

To older stock, short corn, nubbins, slips, &c, judiciously fed, is next 
to meal with them in value, and the waste of corn passing through them 
is not lost, but will be valuable to shoats or hogs that may be allowed to 
range with them. If the hogs are disposed to root where they should 
not, the rings now to be had generally is a preventive, and cheaply pro- 
cured and put in their noses. 

The advantages of shelter is particularly valuable for cows and calves, 
that the milking may be done in rooms of warmth produced by animal 
heat, and then each animal may be better cared for. This, too, applies 
to cows that are to calve in a few months ; care of them is highly valua- 
ble to start them into their fresh milking periods in good flesh. The va- 
rious turnip and sugar beet crops are of great value to be fed as a mix- 
ture with the dry food of winter, which adds to the milk. 

Shelter and separate apartments for work oxen is most important, and 
snug stalls, pens, or something to protect them from the sudden change 
from heat at work to cold, cheerless nights — the young and timid being 
whipped away from already a poor allowance of inferior food, when, too, 
the weaker oxen are more tired, and thus the more easily robbed of 
their share of food — whilst, on the other hand, if each one is to himself, 
he will eat his share at will, and rest to suit his wants. 

This subject is one of great farm value, and is worthy of the thought 
and practice of all who own few or many animals of the kinds named. 

Albemarle Co., Va. S. W. Ficklin. 

[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

"GUENON'S ESCUTCHEON THEORY." 

There seems to be great reluctance on the part of scientific men 
to accept this remarkable indication of the milking qualities of the 
cow. They refuse all consideration of it because they "can't see 
the philosophy of it," or indeed any philosophy in it. 

But the history of science should teach us that observed fact should 
never, on this account, be rejected or disregarded; for how often 
has not our ever progressing philosophy unravelled the mysteries of 
facts which at one time seemed wholly inexplicable. Many yet re- 
main unexplained, but they are, nevertheless, as surely facts as if 
they were well understood. 

Of the truth of this interesting theory, the subject of this paper, 
based, as it unquestionably is, upon observed facts, and which asserts 
that the upward-growing hair in the vicinity of, or rather above, the 
udder of a cow r does furnish an indication of her milking qualities, 
quite an extended observation has convinced me. My regular rou- 
tine of professional labor having been interrupted by the "war, and 
having been thus driven into the country just after I had studied all 
that Guenon had written upon the subject, I gladly availed myself 
of the ample opportunity thus afforded of comparing the escutcheons 
of cows with their reputed milking qualities. The result was so sat- 



60 THE SOUTHERN [January 

isfactory that, after a little experience, I was enabled to discontinue 
my interrogatories, and would in the most oracular manner tell the 
astonished milkwomen as much about their cows as they themselves 
knew; how much milk at the height of their flow they would give, 
and how long would remain dry between their calves. I might give 
some amusing instances of their wonderment and of their consider- 
ing me a wandering "fortune teller." 

My object now is not to attempt either to convince unbelievers or 
to give a philosophical explanation of this sign, but wish merely to 
remind the scientific sceptics of a few analogies in the animal econ- 
omy which may, at least, incline them to think that there may be 
some philosophy in it, and make them less reluctant to accept it as a 
verity. 

I look upon the abnormal direction of the hair in the escutcheon 
of the cow as an indication of the amount of circulation supplied to 
the mammary glands, the extent of the inversion depending on the 
degree of vascularity. 

Now, instead of rejecting this proposition as an absurdity, let us 
look around for its analogies in nature. One of the first that strikes 
us is the upward tendency of the hair covering the brain of a highly 
intellectual man as contrasted with the downward turned hair of the 
idiot; and in cases of great mental activity, accompanied, of course, 
by great vascularity, we see the hair standing stiffly upwards, as in 
the case of "Old Hickory," and also in many living persons that 
might be mentioned. Indeed, a temporary "standing on end" during 
the great flow of blood accompanying the excitement of either fear or 
anger, is familiar to every one; that it should remain permanently 
erect in cases of habitual cerebral excitement need not be wondered 
at. Many cases of abnormal growth of hair, consequent upon great 
vascularity, whether temporary or abiding, occur to the physician, 
one of the most remarkable of which is that which takes place in the 
eyelids during ophthalmia, or from exalted action of whatever kind. 
The erythism of the hair-bulbs give rise to an abundant growth of 
ciliol or eyelashes, and in unnatural directions, producing the affec- 
tion called by oculists "trichiesis." I have seen this state of things 
supervene even upon inflammations having a traumatic origin, and 
•which proved of great obstinacy until this singular complication was 
removed. This abnormal growth of hair is very common in eyes 
overstrained by reading or sewing, and though often but temporary, 
is most frequently chronic and permanent, and affords a good illus- 
tration of the subject of this paper. 

In horses of high metal, of great nervous power, abnormal growth 
of the hair on the forehead or on the neck, near to the brain or in 
the course of the cervical spinal column, are not uncommon. These 
whorls have always been a popular sign of a high-spirited horse. 
The "cow-lick," an upward-growing lock of hair, which occurs fre- 
quently in children at an early age and remains through life, may be 
adduced in opposition to my position, as it sometimes exists in per- 
sons not remarkable for mental activity; but it, too, really furnishes 



1876.] 



PLANTER AND FARMER. 



61 




lIlllll^^Bi^^' Hill ItSm 



62 THE SOUTHERN [January 

an illustration of the principle for which I am contending. This 
unnatural growth was probably occasioned by an inflammatory action 
supervening upon a fall or blow upon the head, which may have re- 
sulted in some concretion, which, pressing upon the brain, may be 
the cause of intellectual dullness. The upward-turned hair in this 
case is not an indication of present vascularity, but of an exalted 
circulation that existed at some previous time. 

I hope that few instances of the abnormal growth of the hair of 
animals will lead the scientific observer not to reject this theory as 
unphilosophical, but may stimulate some investigator to further re- 
search into its connection with the blood supply of the adjacent 
organs. S. K. Jackson. 

Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 
LEICESTER SHEEP. 

The attention of many farmers at the present time being turned to 
the sheep question, and many candidates for their favor being in the 
field. I hope you will give me space for a few words on the Leicester. 
At the recent State Fair there were exhibited fair specimens of Cots- 
wolds, South Oxford and Shropshire Downs, but the Leicesters were 
very third raters, and could only convey a faint idea of what superior 
sheep they really are. More than a hundred years have passed away 
since the days when Bakewell, of Dishley, was a living name, and his 
experiments, conducted with rare skill and judgment, resulted so suc- 
cessfully in the production of the improved Leicester. Mr. Bakewell's 
aim was an animal whose shape would yield the largest proportion of 
valuable meat and the minimum of offal, the most and finest wool, and 
whose rapid growth and fattening was attained by the smallest quantity 
of food. These qualities the modern Leicester retains, and, though the 
fancies of holders and breeders of divers strains of blood have stamped 
it with many local and other features, the foundation is the same, and 
the good points of a century ago are the traits of excellence of to-day. 

The importance and influence of a superior male is acknowledged by 
all breeders ; so I shall here specify the requisites of a good Leicester 
ram, hoping the tyro in sheep husbandry may secure such a one for the 
sultan of his flock. His head should be small, with wide expanded nos- 
trils, his eyes prominent ; broad shoulders, well set on and well filled up 
behind ; straight legs, with fine bone standing wide apart; the back and 
loins broad and straight, with belly ditto, a deep, full twist and soft 
bright wool clothing a thin, fine skin. The nearer any breed of sheep 
comes up to this standard the nearer it is to perfection ; and an animal 
having so many of the attributes of excellence as the Leicester un- 
doubtedly has, must be the one to stamp its characteristics on native 
and other races. To paraphrase Mr. Curtis' (of Michigan) opinion of 
Shorthorns : " It (the Leicester) improves everything"it touches. It is 
the best known breed for improving native stocks. They are kind and 
gentle, easily handled, good breeders and good mothers. I make no 
war on any breed— they have all good points; but the Leicester indubi- 
tably has the most good points." 

In sheep-breeding, wool has sometimes been sacrificed to mutton — 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 63 

mutton occasionally to wool, with champions on either side. But ought 
we not to use an animal growing the maximum of both without preju- 
dice to the quality of either? Much skill, energy and money have been 
expended on this breed since Mr. Bakewell's days, and many breeders, 
including Messrs. Sanday, Cress well, luge, Wiley, Jordan, Turner and 
Pawlet, have reaped great profits and distinction in the cause. Messrs. 
Burton, &c, head the list of the present day, and the prices of fashion- 
able rams are very high and beyond the reach of most ; but good blood 
is to be had at moderate rates, and it should be the shrewd farmer's aim 
to make the less costly animals as useful, handsome and excellent as the 
most expensive. This end attained, and their virtues transmitted to 
their progeny even as the good qualities of the choicest are handed down, 
the farmer's success is at least a solid one; and if he does not attain 
fashion and sensational prices, he finds a profitable result in the produce 
of his own judgment and industry. R. J. F. 



SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



Some cautions are necessary to those who think of turning their atten" 
tion to sheep husbandry. There is no use of attempting it with inferior 
sheep, unless pure-bred bucks are at once used to improve them. It is 
useless to attempt this husbandry, unless the flock is sufficiently large 
to deserve attention, The planter must give his personal attention to 
the business, unless he has absolute confidence in his shepherds. The 
flock must be the object of as constant attention as the corn or cotton 
field. 

The cotton and grain crops on the plantations need not be reduced — 
in fact, they will be greatly increased, and be made on less surface of 
land, by the heavy manuring from the sheep. It is estimated that a 
flock of 1,000 sheep, folded on one acre of land, will thoroughly manure 
it in two nights; or, in round numbers, 180 acres of land will be so 
thoroughly manured in one year as to easily produce one bale of cotton 
to the acre. The manure of the sheep alone will more than pay for 
their keeping. 

There is another view to take of sheep husbandry that is not often 
mentioned. As soon as we have an abundance of fine wool on each 
farm, woolen factories will spring into existence, and a large proportion 
of our wool and cotton will be manufactured at home for home consump- 
tion. We will retain at home vast sums of "money that are now sent 
abroad for woolen and cotton goods. The Charlottesville and Fredericks- 
burg mills are now manufacturing superior woolen goods, and we have 
no doubt there are other factories in the State that are doing the same 
thing. If these factories could be assured of a regular and constant 
supply of fine wools, they would greatly increase their manufacturing 
capacity, and make not only a home market for our wool and cotton, 
but for a thousand other things that cau be profitably raised on a farm. 

To make sheep husbandry successful at the South, the sheep ought 
never to be without a shepherd. One shepherd can easily attend to five 
or six hundred sheep, and no extra labor will be required, except at time 
of shearing. 

An Ohio hog grower says that the following treatment will make the 
biggest hog out of a pig in twelve months : Take two parts of barley, 



64 THE SOUTHERN [January 

two of corn, and one of oats. Grind them together; then cook and feed 
cold. He says it is the cheapest food, and that any pig of good im- 
proved breed can be made to gain a pound a day until a year old. 



HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR STOCK. 

We publish the following private letter as an example of what all our farmers 
should do who wish to improve their stock. — Ed. 

* * * I have recently purchased a thoroughbred Alderney bull, 
sired by "Our Fritz,'* of New Jersey, and in a few months I shall order 
from F. W. Chiles, of Louisa, a thoroughbred Devon heifer, and then 
you shall hear from my success. I have a thoroughbred Southdown 
buck, purchased from him last summer ; he is doing well. I have also 
recently introduced into my swine a full blood Berkshire boar. 

I have grown and exhibited in Franklin the largest and heaviest tur- 
nips of any planter in " Goode's district ; " the largest weighed 14 lbs., 
top off. Can you do better than that ? 

Southampton county, Va. M. L. 



SHEEP vs. DOGS, WOLVES, BEARS, WILDCATS AND RED 

FOXES. 

Ex-Governor Letcher presented a bill in the House of Delegates, 
entitled a bill "to raise revenue for the support of the government, 
the payment of the State debt, and the encouragement of wool- 
growing." It provides, first, that a tax of one dollar shall be im- 
posed on every dog, and of two dollars on every bitch (unless she 
be spayed), to be paid by the owner or harborer thereof; second, 
that the assessor of every district shall enumerate the dogs and 
bitches therein at the time of making the assessment of personal 
property for taxation, and that he shall have power to take the 
sworn statement of any owner of dogs, &c, as to their kind and num- 
ber ; third, that the Treasurer shall collect the tax thus imposed, 
and any person failing to pay within ten days after lawful demand 
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and finable on each dog, &c, 
a sum not less than $3 nor more than $5, in addition to tax and 
costs — but may be relieved of the fine on agreeing to immediately 
kill the dogs, &c, and paying the tax and costs ; fourth, that it 
shall be a misdemeanor to keep or harbor a sheep-killing dog, &c, 
on a penalty of not less than $10 nor more than $20, &c. ; fifth, 
that in payment of the dog tax the following scalps may be received : 
wolf scalps at $2 each, and the scalps of bears, wildcats and red 
foxes at $1 each — provided the animals be killed within the limits 
of the State, by the citizens thereof. 

Note by the Editor. — This is a move in the right direction, but we fear the 
''commutation" clause will utterly defeat its purpose. The very people the 
law is intended to reach, namely : the idle negroes, who like noxious weeds cum- 
ber our soil, would wish nothing better. They could devote, if need be, an en- 
tire month to finding a red fox, when the delivery of his scalp would pay the tax 



1876] PLANTER AND FARMER. 65 

on their dog ; leaving the poor sheep as badly off as they were before. The 
love of the chase, peculiar to our people, will take care of the game mentioned 
in the law. We want a money tax, and no commutation whatever. A com- 
promise is no compromise at all if its benefits all go to one side ; and they cer- 
tainly do if the above is a fair synopsis of the bill proposed by Ex Governor 
Letcher, and we think it is. 




"WHICH BREED IS THE BEST?" 

Scarcely a mail is taken by us from the postoffice that does not 
contain one or more inquiries similar to the above, in tenor. Be- 
ginners all over the country ask "What shall I commence with?" 
" What do you consider the best varieties?" "How shall I begin 
with a choice of breeds?" etc. 

A general answer to this sort of a query can only be given in brief, 
inasmuch as it depends largely upon what the amateur intends to at- 
tempt to do, what his facilities may be, what his location is, and whe- 
ther he purposes to breed as a fancier for the show rooms; as a farm- 
er for marketing simply ; for egg-producing mainly, or for eggs and 
chickens in a general way. For the reproduction of the largest 
quantities of eggs, the Leghorns, Spanish, Houdans and Hamburgs 
may be counted as the best. These varieties are generally non- 
sitters, and during the milder portions of the year, they lay gen- 
erously and satisfactorily, if attentively cared for. If fowls are 
intended to be raised for marketing purposes, with a view to produce 
the most meat at a given age, a cross of those lesser-sized varieties 
with the Cochins and Brahmas is desirable to get good average 
chickens. 

The Asiatics are usually more hardy than the Others, and the 
infusion of this blood with the small breeds not only increases the 
size of the progeny, but the cross approaches maturity more rapidly 
if well fed from chickenhood up. The Brahmas and Cochins are 
persistent sitters, however, and though they are good winter layers 
if the pullets are got out early in the season, they are not so good 
a fowl (pure-bred) as the others first mentioned, for summer layers ; 
while as mothers, or for hatching purposes, they are unrivalled. We 
have found the Partridge Cochin and Dark Brahma varieties excel- 
lent layers in cold weather, and this is a desideratum with many 
fanciers. 

For the show room, as a general thing, the Cochins of dfferent 

colors from black to white, and the Light and Dark Brahmas, taken 

as a class, have long been foremost in the consideration of American 

breeders. They are placed at the head of all the premium society 

5 



M THE SOUTHERN [January 

lists, and probably more in numbers of these huge birds are bred 
than of others. Then come the Grey Dorkings, the Plymouth 
Rocks, the White Dorkings, the French fowls, and the lesser-sized 
ones. We have hitherto advised, and still recommend to amateurs, 
the policy of commencing with but one or two kinds only, at first. 
And in answering the general question, "Which are the best?" we 
can only first decide the object had in view, and this will determine 
whether the novice should try sitters or non-sitters, pure-bred or 
cross-bred birds. Having so resolved, a choice of kinds, as above 
enumerated, will result in satisfaction and profit, if any of these 
popular varieties are properly cared for. 

We have bred nearly all kinds, first or last, and bringing it down 
to a fine thing, we have found that, taking the year through, the 
Asiatics will lay as much in value, on an average, as any of our 
domestic varieties. For numbers of eggs, the Leghorns will excel 
the others, perhaps, in a twelve month. The French fowls lay a 
good-sized egg, but not so many as either of the other varieties, and 
the chicks of the latter are far more tender and difficult to rear than 
those of any of the Asiatic varieties. The Dorkings, crossed with 
the Brahmas, give a good -sized chicken the first year, and this 
makes an excellent farmers' fowl. But the crossing of the various 
Leghorns with the Brahmas and Cochins is one of the very best 
certainly for general use, where "fancy" breeding is not attempted. 
For this latter purpose, it is hardly necessary to add that only pure 
bloods should ever be bred together, of the one chosen variety. 

WOMEN AS POULTRY RAISERS. 

The special capacity of women for caring for pets is so well 
established that it is a matter of surprise that a larger number do 
not make their natural inclination a matter of profit in the raising of 
poultry. There is no reason w T hy woman may not be as successful 
as man in this branch of productive and profitable industry. In- 
deed, when it is considered that the business requires close attention 
to minute details, patience and gentleness of manner, woman seems 
to be peculiarly fitted for the business. The Danbury man's humor- 
ous description of the different ways in which a woman and man 
attempt to get a hen into the coop, and the superiority of the 
former's method is as true as it is funny. After the hennery or 
coop is built, there is no department of the work that a woman 
cannot perform without exhausting labor or too heavy demands upon 
her time. "Down South" poultry raising is woman's special de- 
partment, and one need not go farther South than Baltimore or 
Washington to find the markets thronged with the female venders of 
their own feathered products. That the business is profitable, the 
experience of hundreds testifies, and that it is healthful, and may be 
attractive, is susceptible of demonstration. 



Cook your poultry food in part, and feed it, at least once a 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 67 

day this cold weather (in the morning is the best time), while it is 
hot. Mix with this soft feed, which should be composed of meal 
and vegetables, a little salt, and occasionally a small quantity of 
powdered charcoal and pepper. This renders it 'warming, cleansing 
and palatable to the birds. 

The value of potatoes, turnips, etc., thus cooked with bran and 
corn-meal, is not generally appreciated ; it keeps the fowls in good 
heart, and is altogether economical, as well. The scraps from the 
table can be used up with this feed, and all the dry bits of the family 
may thus be utilized. If you keep but a few fowls, one-half their 
cost of feeding may thus be saved. If you have large numbers to 
provide for, the expense for food is greatly lessened, in the long 
run, by this process, and your birds will be quite the better for this 
treatment, instead of limiting them to dry grain and "cold victuals" 
continually. Fresh vegetables are valuable for their nutritive ma- 
terial, and for the assistance they afford in digestion. 



Feeding-troughs for poultry, properly constructed, ought to 
be generally substituted for the wasteful practice of feeding from 
the ground. The " reasons why " are obvious. Where there is a 
scramble for the food that is thrown helter-skelter, the weak are 
prevented by the strong from getting their share until the latter are 
satisfied, and the food is trampled into the dirt. It is no advantage 
to fowls to eat sand, dirt or gravel mixed with their food. The 
gravel and other indigestible substances necessary to the proper 
trituration of their food in the gizzard, can be given separately, 
and should be, A simple trough may be made, defended by slats 
placed vertically, or on a convenient angle, with spaces sufficient for 
the passage of the head, thus preventing the trampling and soiling 
of the food, which will not be wasted, as in the case where it is 
thrown carelessly on the ground. 



Chicken Cholera. — In response to several letters asking for re- 
cipes for disinfecting mixtures to use about poultry-houses and yards, 
where the above-named dreaded scourge prevails, we give the follow- 
ing : Eight or ten pounds of sulphate of iron (copperas) dissolved in 
five or six gallons of water, with half a pint of crude carbolic acid 
added to the solution, and briskly stirred, makes the cheapest and 
best disinfecting fluid for common use. It can be procured in every 
town, and by any family, and if the carbolic acid is not at hand, 
the solution* of copperas may be used without it. Sprinkle the walls, 
nest-boxes, and perches daily, with the above. 

For the disinfection of ground on which any excremental matter 
of diseased fowls (or of those suspected of disease) has been cast, use 
the "dead oil," (heavy oil) of coal tar, or coal tar itself. It is a 
good plan to use coal tar as a paint for the inside of poultry -houses, 
in districts invaded by chicken cholera. 



68 THE SOUTHERN [January 

Organization of a Poultry and Pet Stock Association of Virginia and 
North Carolina. — A meeting of a number of gentlemen interested in the breed- 
ing of poultry and pet stock, was held at the office of the Southern Planter and 
Farmer December 15th. An Association was organized to be called the Vir. 
ginia and North Carolina Poultry and Pet Stock Association, and the following 
officers were elected: A. M. Bowman, of Augusta county, president; First Vice 
President, R. T. Fulghum, Raleigh, N. C. ; Second Vice President, Dr. L. R. 
Dickinson, Richmond ; Third Vice President, V. M. Firor, Charleston, W. Va. ; 
Fourth Vice President, Dr. B. C. Withers, Danville, Va. ; Fifth Vice President, 
W. S. Thorn, Wythe county ; H. Theodore Ellyson, Richmond, Secretary and 
Treasurer. 

The following persons were elected members of the Executive Committee ; 
Dr. T. J*. Wooldridge, of Hanover county, chairman ; T. L. Payne, Chesterfield 
county ; W. H. H. Lynn, Staunton, Va. ; J. McL. Anderson, Caroline county ; 
F. W. Chiles, Louisa county ; S. W. Ficklin, Charlottesville, Va. ; J. L. Hill, 
Richmond, and W. F. Pattullo, Farmville. 

A committee on Constitution and By-Laws was appointed, which will report at 
a meeting of the Association on the 11th of this month, at 4 o'clock P. M., in 
the office of the Planter and Farmer. 

We gladly publish the above, with the hope that all of our farmers who feel 
any interest in the matter will become annual members. 

When we consider the real value of the poultry interest to our people it does 
appear strange that Virginia has never before established a Poultry Society. All 
of the States, North, South and West have their State Poultry Societies, besides, 
in many cases, local societies. If facts could be ascertained, we venture the as- 
sertion that with most of our farmers (who pay any attention at all to raising 
poultry) it forms the most profitable department of their farms, in proportion to 
the labor and capital invested in it. Then, taking this assertion for granted, let 
us imagine what an amount of profit could be realized from it, if pursued with 
energy and in a systematic manner. 

Mr. Louis Ott, of Nelson county, Va., in a private letter, writes : u I will fur- 
nish you with a description of a henery in Bohemia, where 5,000 hens are kept 
for the production of eggs, and an enormous number of fowls of all kinds are 
fattened every year. In the year 1859, I spent several weeks on that place for 
the purpose of studying the matter and making extracts from the books of the 
establishment. From that henery $33,000 worth of eggs and fowls were sold dur- 
ing the year 1858, while the expenses amounted to about $10,000, leaving a net 
profit of $23,000. I suppose a description of that henery might be interesting to 
many of your readers." 

The Poultry World is the best poultry journal published in this country. We 
are indebted to it for some of our best poultry matter in this number of our 
Journal. We advise our readers to subscribe to it. Address H. H. Soddard, 
Hartford, Conn.; price $1.35. # 

No Garden is complete without a supply of all the small fruits. What an 
addition to the luxuries of the table are the luscious fruits of the garden through- 
out the entire summer. They promote health. The acids of the fruits separate 
the bile from the blood, and ward off bilious complaints, promote health and 
ward off bilious complaints, promote health and prevent doctor's visits. Every 
one should have a fine garden. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 69 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 

PLAN FOR A WHOLESALE MARKET FOR VEGETABLES 
IN RICHMOND. 

Having returned from a visit to Philadelphia,! thought I would give 
you a sketch of their wholesale produce market. I think if something 
similar could be introduced here it would be of great benefit to the far- 
mers supplying the Richmond market, and the people of Richmond also. 
Along the Delaware river, in Philadelphia, are several markets for the 
sale of fruit and produce, most of which comes from New Jersey and 
Delaware. These markets supply most of the hucksters, grocers, hotel- 
keepers, and many private families with fruit and vegetables. Most of 
the fruit and produce sent to these markets are put up in baskets and 
crates, with name of consignor, consignee, destination and point from 
whence shipped marked plainly on each package. The consignee marks 
on his books so many packages of fruit or vegetables to the consignor ; 
as they are sold the amount received is placed to his credit on the books, 
less five per cent., which is charged for commission. The goods are well 
taken care of and protected from the weather until sold. Money is re- 
mitted as often as may be agreed upon. To persons buying in large 
quantities a reduction in price is made ; but a person buying several 
packages must pay the same price per package as if buying only one. 
Many persons with large families often buy a basket or crate of fruit or 
vegetables at a time, and save a great deal of money, as the hucksters 
and grocers must charge more to make any profit, being obliged to re- 
tail in small quantities. There are other market-houses in different parts 
of Philadelphia for the retail trade, but even there some men sell any 
goods consigned to them on commission in the same way as before men- 
tioned. Besides the markets spoken of, there are some of the best busi- 
ness streets allotted to farmers free of charge. On streets running east 
and west they occupy the shady side in summer, and sunny side in win- 
ter but are not allowed to stand within three squares of a market-house. 

How different here ! You pay ten cents for the privilege of nearly 
roasting in summer and freezing in winter, the same side of the street 
being occupied all the time. How much better the wholesale market 
would be for many farmers. As it is now, many of them bring large 
quantities of the same kind of produce at the same time, and glut the 
market ; but they must sell at a great sacrifice or haul it home. Another 
time the same article, or others very necessary, may be very scarce in 
market, although the farmer may have plenty at home ; but he is, not 
aware of the fact in time to avail himself of it. Now, if such a market 
was established here, the commission merchant could keep the farmer 
posted so as to know what kind of goods was needed, and when to send 
them; and what is more, he could send them by any person capable of 
driving a cart. The markets would be better supplied, and should they 
be overstocked with any particular article, the merchant might ship to 
other points and realize a fair price in the end for the farmer. It would 



70 THE SOUTHERN [January 

also be a check to any extortion of middlemen, as any person, by taking 
a package or bushel of fruit or produce, would get it nearly as low as 
the huckster. The system works well in Philadelphia, and I do not see 
why it would not here. It is worth a trial, at least. Let the Grangers 
combine and start it ; the other farmers will soon join in when they see 
the benefit of it. But let us have the opinions of others on this subject. 
Hanover county, Ya. J. S. 



[For the Southern Planter and Farmer.] 
POTATOES. 

The soil best adapted to this crop is a good clay loam, rich in 
organic matter, with a little sand by way of shortening. A rich 
piece of new ground will produce potatoes of extra quality, but not 
in extra quantities. Land which has been highly manured, or is .of 
great natural fertility, and which has been well cultivated for a 
number of years is desirable for this crop. A good clover sod is 
hard to beat. Potatoes love a mellow soil, therefore the land which 
is to be planted in potatoes should be well \ lowed in the Fall or 
early Winter, so that it may be thoroughly mellowed by the frosts 
of Winter. If stable or barn-yard manure is to be used on the 
crop, it should be well rotted and applied to the ground after plow- 
ing in the Fall. Of commercial manures a good super-phosphate is 
best, applied in the drill ; wood ashes and well rotted wood pile ma- 1 
nure are excellent fertilizers for this crop. 

Plant your early potatoes early, and your late potatoes late ; so 
that the early potatoes may mature before the heat and drouths of 
midsummer ; and so that the late potatoes will not mature until the 
heat and drouths are passed and before the coming of frost. The 
early varieties should be planted in February or March or as soon 
as the ground can be worked in the Spring, but be careful not to 
work your potato ground when wet. For very early potatoes plant 
in the Fall and cover deeply, and then mulch the ground to prevent 
freezing. The late varieties should not be planted untii after the 
first of June. 

Having prepared the ground well, lay off the rows with any con- 
venient implement, two and a half or three feet apart, and from four 
to six inches deep, cut your potatoes in small pieces, with one or 
two eyes only to each piece. Each eye makes a vine, and many 
vines make few and small tubers. Plant the pieces in the bottom 
of the furrow about one foot apart. My own practice is^o walk in 
the furrow, setting one foot close in front of the other and planting 
a piece of potatoe close to the toe of each foot as I put it down. In 
planting always put the cut side down and the eye up. Cover with 
a turn plow or any convenient implement. Cultivate thoroughly at 
least once in two weeks until the blossoms appear and the vines be- 
gin to break down. A coulter or a bull-tongue is preferable, be- 
cause it loosens the ground to a considerable depth. A little dirt 
may be thrown to the vines, but don't hill or ridge. On land of 
only average fertility, mulching will be found to be of very great 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 71 

benefit. Having planted and covered jour potatoes as fcr cultiva- 
tion, but in rows only two feet apart, cover the whole surface of the 
ground with a mulch of leaves, short straw, rotten chaff, very coarse 
strawy manure, or other litter about six inches deep. Your potatoes 
will then be secure against drouth, and will need no other manure, 
and no cultivation whatever. If your ground has been well pre- 
pared before slanting there will be no weeds of any consequence, 
and the few that force up through the mulch may be easily pulled 
by hand. On lands suffering much from drouth this will be found 
to be the best of all ways to grow potatoes. It will require con- 
siderable labor and time to haul sufficient litter to cover the ground 
effectually, but you wi 1 be well repaid for both; if mulched in this 
way, the potatoes will, for the most part, grow just on the top of the 
ground and under the mulch, and they can easily be dug by hand, 
a small pronged hoe being the best implement to use. If not 
mulched use a two-horse plow to raise the potatoes, letting the team 
straddle the row, keeping the plow canted over a little on the land 
side, and running it in the middle of the row. After picking up 
all the potatoes thrown out by the plow, run back in the same fur- 
row, and you will get them pretty much all. Dig your potatoes as 
soon as the tops begin to die, or the potatoes will sprout in the 
ground. If planted in March the early varieties will ripen per- 
fectly by the tenth of July ; and the ground may then be plowed 
and sown to turnips, making the best preparation for this crop of 
which I have any knowledge. Put your potatoes under cover as 
fast as you dig them, especially if the sun be hot ; for exposure to 
a hot sun materially injures them both for table use and for seed, 
causing them to blister and become watery, and making them liable 
to rot. Store in a cool dark place ; a good cellar, cool in summer 
and frost-proof in winter is best ; do not put too many in a pile or 
they may heat and rot. I use bins three feet wide and eight inches 
deep, arranged like shelves around the sides of the cellar. If kept 
in a dark cellar, or covered from the light with old carpets, bags, or 
straw, they will not sprout so soon in the Spring. 

Select medium sized potatoes for seed, and it is best to select 
them soon after digging the crop. Potatoes deteriorate rapidly in 
our climate and soil, our winters not being long enough to keep 
them well, and it will be found advisable to secure fresh Northern 
seed as often as once in three years. 

On suitable land potatoes pay quite well as a market crop, not re- 
quiring as much labor as tobacco*, and bringing in fully as large re- 
turns. Besides being so important as subsistence for the farmer's 
own family, they are excellent fee i for cattle and pigs, either boiled 
or chopped fine and mixed with meal. For feeding to young pigs 
the small unsalable potatoes are worth at least half as much as corn. 
They are also much relished by chickens if boiled, chopped fine and 
fed warm, and are highly recommended by some poultry fanciers as 
feed for hens, especially during the winter and spring. 

Albemarle Co., Va. A. A. MacD. 



72 THE SOUTHERN [January 

MARKET GARDENING NEAR LARGE CITIES. 

No matter bow favorable the location, nor what the character of the 
soil may be, he tills to great disadvantage who fails to make a liberal 
annual application of manures. The question for the gardener is, How 
much manure can I use with increased profit? and, if he is alive to his 
own interest, he will soon discover that the quantity that can be so ap- 
plied to an acre is large. 

Of the bulky manures, that from stables where the horses are fed on 
grain and hay is of most value. This quality of manure, almost free 
from straw, we buy at Newark, N. J., at an average of one dollar and 
thirty-eight cents for a two-horse load. This is hauled and thrown in 
heaps, sometimes composted with tanner's refuse and woods earth, turn- 
ing it over two or three times before applying it. Market-gardeners 
will use from fifty to seventy loads of this manure to an acre, besides a 
top-dressing of five or six hundred pounds of a special fertilizer. 

For the past four years we have contracted for all the refuse from a 
large soap factory, and have found this waste lime, potash and fatty 
matter a valuable top-dressing, applying it at the rate of three or four 
tons to the acre. We have also used a compost made by decomposing 
muck with the salt and lime mixture,* then adding to this compound 
an equal bulk of yard-manure. At the end of six months the whole 
mass is homogeneous, and, when turned under for garden-crops, is fully 
equal, load for load, to pure horse manure. 

Gardeners in our section use "slaughter-house" manure with profit- 
able results. This is usually composted with other manures and left in 
a pile for several months before using it. It costs about one dollar and 
fifty cents a two-horse load, and in quality is about the same as a load 
of horse manure. 

We have used as much as seventy-five tons of dried blood, or sugar- 
house scum, in a single season ; when this is broken finely and composted 
with horse manure and woods earth, it is a powerful fertilizer for all 
kinds of crops. 

Wood ashes are always highly esteemed, but of late years the supply 
has been very limited. Unleached wood ashes are worth from forty to 
fifty cents per bushel ; for fertilizing purposes, using ten to twenty bush- 
els to an acre. A top-dressing of lime every third year, thirty or forty 
bushels to the acre, spread broadcast, and harrowed in just before plant- 
ing, pays handsomely. 

Every available substance that will make manure should find its way 
to the compost heap or hog-pen, to be worked over, and thus add to the 
capital for the garden ; on this will greatly depend the success. 

Of the concentrated fertilizers now in general use, both for the kitchen 
and market gardens, are finely-ground bone, Peruvian guano, super- 
phosphate of lime, and last, but not least in value, fish guano. The re- 
quired quantity of these will depend'on the condition of the soil. Besides 
the main supply of yard manure, we use annually from three hundred to 
one thousand pounds to an acre, and find that such an application of a 
pure article pays well. 

Capital. — With the farmer, the laying out of a kitchen-garden should 

* The salt'and lime mixture is made by dissolving one bushel of salt in water, and then "laking 
three bushels of lime with the salt water. This mixture should be turned over two or three times 
under a shed; one bushel of it will be enough for a cord of muck. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 73 

be of the first consideration. In spare moments a fence can be put around 
the garden, which should be located convenient to the dwelling. With 
a full supply of the leading kinds of vegetables, farmers could board 
their help for about one-half of what it costs when only meat, bread and 
potatoes form the principal food. With the farm work properly ar- 
ranged, the kitchen-garden can be kept in good order without any extra 
cost for labor. 

For the market-gardener, capital is very important when the pro- 
prietor knows how to use it — an art learned only by experience. It does 
not make much difference how intelligent a man may be in other respects, 
nor how much capital he has to start with ; if he has had no experience 
in the business, he lacks the main element of success. 

We know personally a large number of well-to-do market-gardeners — 
men now worth from ten to forty thousand dollars each — none of whom 
had five hundred dollars to begin with. Industrious, hard-working 
men, these, who at first turned every available dollar into manure and 
reliable seed. In fact, he who would be successful in market-gardening 
must take the lead in all kinds of weather and all kinds of work — late 
and early, rain or shine. To stalwart young men, even with a limited 
capital, willing to work industriously, the chances of Aiaking "money 
in the garden " are as promising as ever they were. " Whatever is done, 
let it be well done." — Quinn's " Money in the Garden." 



CULTURE OF CRANBERRIES. 

Where do all the cranberries come from, is a question often asked, and 
on investigation we are fairly astonished to witness the rise and remark- 
able amount of business now transacted in this small fruit. To those 
having low lands, useless for any other purpose, the cranberry, once 
planted, often yields the possessor a'greater profit than any similar area 
of other crops on the same farm. 

The consumption of this fruit is extending rapidly into all parts of the 
world ; is becoming more and more a household necessity. No tea-table 
is now considered complete without it, and on ship voyages it is of almost 
indispensable utility. New Jersey raises the largest bulk of cranberries 
in this country, employing about six thousand acres for the purpose, the 
value of the crop raised on which, last year, was $600,000. The whole 
cranberry crop of the country is estimated at about $1,500,000. Massa- 
chusetts raises not less that ten thousand barrels a year. Within the 
past five years Wisconsin has made rapid progress in the culture of the 
cranberry, and the crop in that State this season is estimated at $300,000. 
The average price per barrel of this fruit is $10, Cape Cod cranberries 
commanding the highest price. The fruit raised on the Cape is the best 
of its kind in the world. It is exported largely to England, and finds its 
way to the Queen's dinner-table. 

Those who have spots usually regarded as waste places on their farms, 
places too wet to plow or to mow, may, by proper management, have 
their cranberry patch, and grow for home consumption and for market. 
Let such waste places be utilized by growing cranberries. 



Fresh Tomatoes Grown and Canned. — We are glad to know that John B. 
Davis, Esq., of this city, has proved, after several years' experience, that the 
canning of tomatoes can be as successfully and profitably conducted in Virginia 



74 THE SOUTHERN [January 

as elsewhere. His magnificent estate, " Leslie Manor," in King William county, 
had hundreds of acres in this fruit during" the past "year, which he has success- 
fully canned and sold at profitable prices. 

Mr. Jas. T. Tinsley, of Hanover, also commenced this business the past year, 
and he is pleased with the results. Both of these gentlemen have promised to 
give us an article on their syst -ms of cultivating and manufacturing this fruit for 
our next number. 

11 Gardening for Pleasure" is the felicitous title of Mr. Peter Henderson's new 
work on the cultivation of vegetables, fruits and flowers. It has proved equal in 
interest and value to his two previous books, u Gardening for Profit" and "Prac- 
tical Floriculture/'' Price, $1.50. For sale by Orange Judd & Company, New 
York. 



OFFICERS OF THE STATE GRANGE. 

Master — J. W. White, Eureka Mills, Va. 
Overseei- — T. T. Tredway, Prince Edward, Va. 
Lecturer — J. W. Morton, Eureka Mills, Ya. 
Steward — Wm. McComb, Gordonsville, Va. 
Asst. Steward — I. B. Dunn, Washington county, Na. 
Chaplain — J. C. Blackwell, Buckingham, Va. 
Treasurer— W '. B. Westbrook, Petersburg, Va. 1 
Secretary — M. W. Hazlewood,»Richmond, Va. 
Gatekeeper — M. B. Hancock, Charlottesville, Va. 

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 

A. B. Lightner, of Augusta. 
R. V. Gaines, of Charlotte. 
A. M. Moore, of Clarke. 
R. L. Ragland, of Halifax. 



SOME THINGS WHICH THE PATRONS PROPOSE TO DO. 

1. To secure for themselves, through the Granges, social and edu- 
cational advantages not otherwise attainable, and to thereby, while 
improving their condition as a class, ennoble farm life, and render it 
attractive and desirable. 

2. To give full practical effect to the fraternal tie which unites 
them, in helping and protecting each other in case of sickness, be- 
reavement, pecuniary misfortune, and want and danger of every 
kind. 

3. To make themselves better and more successful farmers and 
planters, by means of the knowledge gained, the habits of. industry 
and method established, and the quickening of thought induced by 
intercourse and discussion. 

4. To secure economies in the buying of implements, fertilizers 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 75 

and family supplies, and in transportation, as well as increased profits 
in the sale of the products of their labor, without enhancing their 
cost to the consumer. 

5. To entirely abolish the credit system in their ordinary transac- 
tions, always buying and selling on a cash basis, both among them- 
selves and in their dealings with the outside world. 

6. To encourage co-operation in trade, in farming and in other 
branches of industry, especially those most intimately connected 
with agriculture. 

ARBITRATION. 

• 

Among the benefits to be derived from the organization of the 
Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, we desire to draw the attention 
of our readers to the system of ''arbitration." Why should our 
farmer, on the slightest provocation, " go to law ?" Has any one of 
them made anything by it ? Even if they have gained their case, 
have they not generally been the losers ? And how many, if not the 
majority of law suits, have sprung from some trifling cause ? All 
this, brother farmers, can be avoided by simply consenting to appear 
before a commission of three, selected by each Grange, whose busi- 
ness is to hear and decide such cases as may be brought before them, 
it being understood that all the members of the Grange agree to 
abide by the decision rendered by this committee. Hasty actions 
will be prevented, and all of us will acknowledge that many law 
suits are the result of passion, often bitterly repented of. We would 
beg our Granges to consider this subject well, and try their best to 
have a " Committee of Arbitration " established in each Grange. 
It should be made a law that any case not amounting to more than 
the value of $ — should be brought before the committee. We have 
seen the salutary influence of such committees. In the kingdom of 
Denmark, where it has existed for more than thirty-five years, nobody 
can go before the court with a case without first having submitted it 
to the committee. If this fails to settle the difficulty, then they can 
proceed to law. Seldom does a minor case fail to be settled before 
these committees ; thus fortunes are saved to the people. But it 
does not only save money; it prevents the growing of ill-feeling and 
enmity. Prolonged law suits create and nourish them ; a speedy 
settlement destroys these feelings in the bud. Thus, morally, the 
system of arbitration has a beneficial influence on society. — Our 
Home Journal. 



Profitable Grange Work. — An Alabama Grange has appointed 
a committee to visit the farm of each member of that Grange, and 
to report in writing the state of the growing crops-; the condition of 
farm and fences; quality and condition of stock; methods of culti- 
vation; rotation of crops; kinds of crops raised and the varieties 
of each ; varieties of fruits raised, and the general condition of 
farm buildings. These reports are not for* publication, unless the 



76 THE SOUTHERN L Jarmar ? 

owner desires, but are to form the subjects of discussion at future 
meetings. Such Grange work cannot but be profitable to the com- 
munity in which it is situated, and could be imitated by other 
Granges with much benefit. 

The War on Railroads by the P. op H. — A certain Grange, 
thirty miles from New York City, recently attempted to procure a 
reduction in the price of railroad tickets, the round fare being $1.80. 
Last week its purpose was accomplished — the road offering to sell 
five hundred tickets for five hundred dollars, which offer was promptly 
accepted, the operation effecting a clear saving of four hundred dol- 
lars and nobody hurt. The tickets are good during the current 
year, but will all be used long ^before the expiration of the time. 
This is the kind of war Patrons are ncaking on railroads. The road 
in question seems to like it, and is likely to have more of it. — Rural 
Carolinian. 



NOTES FOR THE MONTH. 



JANUARY. 

This month received its name from Janus, whom the Romans recognized, at 
one time, as a king of ancient days ; at another, as a hero ; at another, again, as 
a God of nature. On the first day of this month, an offering, consisting of wines 
and fruits was presented to Janus, and on the same day, the image of the God 
was crowned with laurels, the consul ascended in solemn procession to the capi- 
tol, and friends made presents to one another. As a God of nature, too, he was 
represented as holding a key, and presiding over gates, and openings ; and as 
opening the course of the year in the heavens, and every gate upon earth; even 
those of private dwellings, being supposed to be under his superintending care. 
On New Year's day, which was the principle festival of the God, people took care 
that all they said and did was pure and favorable, and ominous for the occur- 
rences of the whole year — an example worthy of imitation by the denizens of 
this nineteenth century. And why should not this be applicable to the farmers 
also of the present era? On this day, let him commence his operations aright, 
and lay his plans wisely for the year. Let him reflect what is to bealone by him 
for the next twelve months, and how it should be done ; what his resources are, 
and how they are to be applied. Let him put aside complaints and repinings ; 
let him understand his difficulties, and lay his plans to overcome them j not over- 
estimating or undervaluing what labors lie before him, but fully comprehending 
what perseverance and labor and energy will accomplish. 

PLANS FOR THE TEAR. 

Let the farmer then, thoughtfully, deliberately and wisely, lay his plans in thi3 
month for the year. The garment, of course, must be cut according to the cloth ; 
but as far as in him lies, let him endeavor to improve his lands, both by proper 
culture, the application of all the putrescent manure he can obtain, and the use 
of such other fertilizers as his means will admit, and as experience has proved, 
will pay on lands similar to his own. Let hinj mark the effects of all the fertili- 
zers he uses, leaving out portions of land where none are applied, to compare 
with that where fertilizers are used, so that he may go to work intelligently for 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 77 

another year. Ashes must all be saved and applied — so of all the hen house ma- 
nures to be obtained ; these two last to be composted with rich dirt, and gypsum. 
Indeed, all putrescent manures should be composted where materials can be got- 
ten together without too much cost. Our Northern neighbors talk much of 
"swamp muck" for composting. Our Southern farmers know little of its use, 
or the mode of obtaining it. If obtainable it should be hauled out during the dry 
weather of the summer and fall, and suffered to dry in a measure, if wet, before 
composting. 

Soap suds, and everything that will promote growth of vegetation, must be 
carefully saved. The soap suds must be put on composts heaps, or applied di- 
rectly to the roots of fruit trees or grape vines. 

HAULING OUT MANURE 

Must be done whenever in this month the ground is dry enough, and particularly 
when frozen. When frozen, top-dress wheat and winter oats, and rye and clo- 
ver, and grasses. Do not credit the opinion of some not being wise farmers, 
that hauling out putrescent manures will not pay, for if they do not pay, no fer- 
tilizers in our opinion will. For gross feeding plants, and in winter, it is not so 
important that manures have fermented and decomposed much. For vegetables, 
the manure should be piled up, occasionally forked over, and suffered to lay until 
spring, and then to be lightly turned in with a one-horse plow. 

LIMING 

May be done in all available weather this month, where the land "requires it, and 
almost all our lands are benefitted by it. All lands not. previously sufficiently 
limed or having enough lime in their composition, or unless greatly deficient in 
vegetable matter, require lime. The quantity deoends on the quantity of vegeta- 
ble matter on the land, and on the lime already in the soil, and perhaps on other 
conditions. Lime it is known makes soluble, and available for plant growth, min- 
eral, and other matters found in the soil. As a general rule, 100 bushels is a 
liberal application to an acre. If the surface to be limed is large, then it will be 
better to apply 50 bushels, and another year 50 bushels more. 

PLOUGHING 

Must be pushed forward this month (if not already finished) in all suitable 
weather. Do not neglect to prepare for the corn crop, an all important crop, we 
think, for the farmer. The late William Hill Carter, one of the most judicious 
farmers we have ever had in Virginia, in reply to an article in this journal, " Corn 
Growing not Profitable," in which the writer states "no one pretends that it pays 
to grow less than 50 bushels to the acre, and at $1 per bushel, says, " insure us 
$1 per bushel for corn in Virginia, and we can make more money by it, than by 
any other crop." Mr. Carter speaks of corn as "the bread and meat, the hay 
or fodder, the manure, the cleaner of land, the bedding for man and beast, the 
most important thing on a Southern farm," and expresses the opinion that " any 
farmer in Virginia, who buys western corn, will soon have to move out West." 

PREPARATION FOR VEGETABLES. 

Manure should be gotten ready for hot beds, which should be put down the 
last of this month, or first of February for early cabbage and tomatoes. Sticks 
for peas and beans should be prepared, and the garden cleaned up. Some of our 
Hanover friends who desire very early garden peas, sow them the first good weather 
this month, that the land can be worked. Holes for watermelon planting should 
be opened this month, and one bushel of good, partly rotted stable manure pu 
in them, and the dirt drawn over, to remain until time for planting. 



THE SOUTHERN [January 

CARE OF STOCK. 

Much attention should be paid to stock now. Good feeding and good feed must 
be provided, so that our animals may come out of the winter in good condition. 
August pigs farrowed this month must be kept in warm, dry, well littered quar- 
ters. If this is done and the sow well fed with washes and corn, the pigs will 
thrive and make fine hogs by 1st of December. Towards the latter part of the 
month lambs will be dropped, and they and the ewes will require constant at- 
tention. They should be separated from the rest of the flock, have good shel- 
ters, and the ewes be well fed, and the lambs in a week or two provided with meal 
or some good mill-feed in a trough, from which the mothers are excluded ; they 
will then grow off rapidly and be ready for market when prices are high. Cows 
to calve in the spring must be well fed and sheltered, and mares in foal should 
be separated from the horses, provided with large roomy quarters, well littered, 
and be well fed on hay and grain, with occasional feed of mill offal or a peck of 
carrots or rutabagas twice a day, to keep their bowels in good condition. They 
may be moderately worked, but not overstrained or driven hard ; as foaling time 
approaches they should be watched and be kept quiet and undisturbed ; the 
shoses should be removed to prevent injuring the colt. 

TREE PLANTING 

May be done this month in good mild weather, and grape vines be trimmed and 
tied up. Raspberries may also be set out. 

PUTTING TOOLS IN ORDER. 

Tools and wagons and harness should be attended to in bad weather this month. 
Every farmer should keep a small shop and tools that are needed for this pur- 
pose. Brass rivets, to be gotten from all hardware stores, are very useful for 
speedy and secure mending of harness. 

DITCHING, GRUBBING AND FENCING, 

Must all be tended to on good days this month. 

READING. 

No progressive farmer, or one who svishes to progress, should neglect agricul- 
tural reading. Now is the time to provide good journals and good standard 
works on farming, and to read them carefully. Do not be afraid of "Book 
Farming;" the objections to it are all nonsense. 



Morial department 

ABOUT THE BUREAU OF AGRICULTURE, STATISTICS 

AND MINES. 

It will be observed that we lay great stress elsewhere in this book upon the 
immediate establishment of a "Bureau of Agriculture, Statistics and Mines." 
To our mind, we cannot afford to wait a year longer. 

Virginia now occupies but two-ninths of her original proportions, and hence 
it is not at all necessary that we should have a multitude of offices of any kind. 
We want no special " Board of Public Works," nor any special " Board of Im- 
migration.^' One office, properly conducted, could attend to the whole business. 
The Bureau above mentioned might, without any confusion, because the subjects 
are kindred, combine under one general head, public works, agriculture, mines, 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 79 

immigration and statistics, and it would not be difficult td find men exactly 
suited to the work. We do not want there, of course, any old political dead- 
wood ; they have had their good time, and ought now to be content to rest on 
their laurels. We do want live men, and the Bureau will be a failure if they are 
not secured. Chloroform is not the medicine we need, but tonics that will put 
new life in things, and show the world that Virginia, in the arts of peace, can 
be no less glorious than in the deeds of war ; in few words, that she is equal to 
any emergency. 

The Public School in its Relations to the Negro. — As "good wine needs no 
bush," so we have little to add to the powerful argument of our correspondent 
"Cms" on this subject. It is a business our people have plunged into without 
considering at all what it involved. We owe, as a State, a great deal of money, 
and have put up "a poor mouth" so persistently since the war about paying even 
the interest on it, that our credit (before the war ranking with the best on earth) 
has sunk so low as to authorize our friends abroad to recommend no further deal- 
ings with us where money was concerned. In the face ol this appalling state of 
affairs, we have undertaken a stupendous charity, in the way of negro schools, 
costing thousands of dollars every year to sustain it, and with nothing gained by 
it but the burnishing of a cudgel with which to beat our own brains out. We 
cannot make a white man out of him, and spoil a very good negro. This crea- 
ture has been studied, in the abstract, by men as able as Burr, Nott, Morton 
aud Wyman, and their conclusions may be summed up in the Homely saying that 
"you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." 



THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA :— SHALL IT GO DOWN? 

It is with peculiar pain (giving expression to our feelings as a Virginian), that 
we hear of Prof. Gildersleeve's decision to quit the University of Virginia and 
accept service in the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore. When we consider 
the uncomfortable condition of the University, in the matter of its " sinews of 
war," we are apprehensive that the early future may witness also the exodus of 
Prof Mallet, and other members of the faculty, whose eminent abilities Virginia 
cannot afford to lose. 

We disclaim utterly all idea of depreciating in the least the merits of the other 
excellent institutions of learning in the State, but there has attached to the Uni- 
versity, through its illustrious founder, and the evidence of rare excellence in- 
volved in its diploma, such a prestige, that whereas we might be content with 
" half a loaf" in most other things, we can never consent to any diminution here. 
If we must have economy, in respect of the demands upon the public purse, and 
this necessity no man will gainsay, let it not be exerted in the destruction of this 
chief custodian of the public spirit of Virginia. This spirit gave form and exe- 
cution to the Revolution, and the nerve latterly to maintain, through a struggle 
that turned her fields to wastes, and her homes to ashes, the vital principle it 
proclaimed,' that governments derive their just powers " from the consent op 

THE GOVERNED." 

As a couserver of this spirit, the Utopian contrivance called public schools 
affords no compensation for the loss or .decay of such an institution. They level 
down, but never level up, otherwise Massachusetts, the peculiar home of the pub- 
lic school, would have disdained to scour Southern plantations during the war for 



8 THE SOUTHERN [January 

negroes to act as "substitutes" for men unwilling, in the dread arbitrament of the 
sword, to back their claim by their lives. If this levelling business was really- 
productive of good, this same home of the public school would not have insisted, 
against Southern protest, upon maintaining the slave-trade by constitutional enact- 
ment until 1808, and afterwards deliberately set on foot arrangements to destroy 
this very property (the sale of which had made their people rich) with no pretense 
whatever of refunding any portion of the money paid for it. In general, they cau 
hardly be considered wholesome fruits of the system, looking at regions in which 
time has given it the fullest test, where a faithful officer, public or private, is the 
exception ; where the marriage bond has become so weakened as to be broken 
on the most trivial pretext ; where the birth of children is systematically prevent - 
ed, and where adulterous "sons of Eli" are elevated to the position of heroes. 

It is by no meaus the least frightful result of the war that, through recon- 
structed constitutions and other advantages taken of a prostrate people, the per- 
nicious institutions of the North should have found a lodgment here. We cannot, 
therefore, afford to dispense with any lawful means that will prove effective in 
preventing the spread of their baleful influence. 

The children of the University are to be found in every county throughout the 
State. Let them, before the pressure of necessity causes the transfer of its 
noble faculty to States more favored in material prosperity, see that their rep- 
resentatives in the Legislature devise some feasible means by which this peculiar 
Virginia institution may be placed, for ^all time^ to come, on a footing unembar- 
rassed for perfect usefulness. 



THE DEATH OF MR. CRENSHAW. 

Death hath no respect of persons. Lewis D. Crenshaw, of the " Haxall 
Mills," is no more. His name is familiar in every farm house throughout the 
State, and this news will bring sorrow to them all. He died on Monday, De- 
cember 27th, after several months of ill-health, aged fifty-nine. The grass will 
grow green over him, for he loved not himself only. 

In a few short months, three of the four men who, for so many years, gave 
direction to the milling interest of this city, have passed away : Abram War- 
wick, James Dunlop, and Lewis D. Crenshaw. Only Thomas W. McCance 
remains, and we pray it may be God's will to spare him yet long to the people in 
whose hearts he holds so large a place. Few cities have been blest with four 
such men. Their names are written on every page of our history for the last 
forty years, and they shine bright with an integrity and honor that knew no 
shadow. Of large public spirit, and alive to every movement that gave promise 
of prosperity and dignity to the city, and through it to the commonwealth, the 
loss of the three who have gone from us hath brought us most heavy hearts. In 
these days, when old landmarks have been washed away by blood, and the 
economy of our State is undergoing rearrangement, the absence of their counsel 
will be sorely felt, and who shall stand in their places I Let us hope that the 
same Providence which raised up these men will not leave us bereft, but 
vouchsafe us others, who, encouraged by the example of the departed, will 
take up their work and crown it with the .success they strove, with such single- 
ness of purpose, to accomplish. 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 81 

Virginia will not be at the Centennial. — The refusal of the Legislature 
to appropriate any money for this purpose, should be hailed with thankfulness in 
in every part of the State. Aside from the manifest impropriety of lending 
countenance to an act of hypocrisy (see present condition of South Carolina), the 
people's money should not be wasted any more on a show than in the effort to 
make white people out of negroes. Besides, no man can be credited with gen- 
erosity when the only means at his disposal for its exercise is other people's 
money. Every dollar, above what is needed to conduct the State Administra- 
tion in the most economical matter, and to render available our resources, both 
material and in the direction of our public spirit, belongs to the people who 
have waited these many years to receive their just dues ; and this obligation 
should ever prevent our listening to anything that would in the least interfere 
with our duty in this behalf. When the North shall show, by its acts, that it is 
well disposed towards us in the South, we will not fail to meet the overture with 
the heartiest response. Until then we have no concern with anything but our 
own immediate business. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF GEN. WM. H. RICHARDSON. 

In issuing the first number of The Planter and Farmer for the present year, 
we feel that we cannot perform a more pleasing and acceptable office than that 
of accompanying it with an accurate likeness and a biographical sketch of Gen. 
Wm. H. Richardson, whose venerable form and strongly marked features are 
familiar to thousands of the people of Virginia. Happy are we in being able to 
say that a character so pure, and a life so useful, are yet spared to us. Although 
he has passed those limits allotted by the Psalmist as the duration of human life ; 
and although he has borne more than the ordinary share of the labors and vicis- 
situdes incident to human life, we may say of him what is said of the Jewish lea- 
der — u His eye was not dim nor his natural force abated." 

For able and faithful service through a long series of years, in the several pub- 
lic stations he has filled, the people of Virginia owe him a debt of gratitude ; — 
but for his energetic, persevering and well directed efforts in the cause of Vir- 
ginia agriculture, their obligations to him are still greater. At all events, we 
feel that in thus presenting him to our readers, and in thus marking our appreci- 
ation of a character unsullied by vice, a name untarnished by defamation, and a 
life devoted to useful labors, we are performing a simple duty, and one that will 
be acceptable to all classes of Virginians, more especially to those constituting 
the large, intelligent and respectable agricultural class. 

Wm. H. Richardson was born in the city of Richmond, on the 18th of Decem- 
ber, 1795. His father, Maj. George Richardson, was an officer in the war of the 
Revolution. His mother, Francis Bacon Whitelocke, was descended on the 
mother's side, from Nathaniel Bacon, the famous rebel of colonial times. She 
lived until April, 1861, and at the time of her death was in her ninety-first year. 
His first participation in public affairs was at an interesting and exciting period 
in the history of the country. This was in the year 1813, the second year of what, 
no matter how many wars we may have, will, perhaps, always be known as "The 
Last War." When the British fleet occupied the waters of Virginia, there was a 
great stir among the people of the State. The martial ardor and patriotic im- 
pulses of both old and young, were quickened into action. The Richmond troops 
were ordered to Norfolk, and the subject of this sketch, then a youth, volunteer- 
ed for the service. The company to which he attached himself was one of the 

6 



82 THE SOUTHERN [January 



finest companies in the service. Three months afterwards, and on the return of 
this company to Richmond, he was elected its first lieutenant, and soon afterwards 
succeeded to the command of it. At the close of the war, and after having de- 
clined promotion more than once, he resigned. His natural military taste was 
stimulated and nourished by the scenes through which he had passed, and has 
clung to him through all the peaceful and laborious business of his life. To have 
served in "The Last War," has ever in Virginia been regarded as a high mark 
of merit and patriotism, and in many instances has been rewarded with public 
station. To this cause, in part, at least, may be attributed his unanimous elec- 
tion, in the year 1821, to the office of Clerk of the Council of State, a position of 
trust and confidence, in which had been merged the duties of Secretary of State, 
under the constitution of 1776. 

The Council of State was one of the old institutions of Virginia, inherited from 
colonial times. It was composed of nine of the most prominent and trusted citi- 
zens of the Commonwealth ; and to be chosen a member of that body, was reck- 
oned a high honor. Modern innovation has swept it from existence, but many 
of our comparatively young citizens remember when it existed. 

Upon the creation in 1832-33, of the office of Secretary of the Commonwealth, 
Captain (for such was then his title) Richardson, was unanimously elected to it, 
by the Legislature. 

At the session of the Legislature of 1827-28, without any solicitation on his 
part, and even against his wishes, he was made ex-officio State Librarian, when 
indeed, there was no State library. This library Jiad to be formed. To select, 
purchase and arrange the books was an arduous undertaking, involving as much 
of taste and literary, scientific and historical knowledge, as of labor. It is true 
that the Librarian had the assistance and co-operation of a committee of the 
State Council, especially appointed for that purpose, but it is not assuming too 
much for him, to say that upon him chiefly devolved the delicate task of select- 
ing, while the burdens of purchasing, collecting and arranging these books fell 
exclusively upon him. Under his auspices the admirable Library of Virginia 
was built up. It was a rare, valuable and happily chosen collection of books, 
being confessedly the finest library, of its extent, in the United States. So suc- 
cessfully was this institution conducted by the Secretary of the Commonwealth 
and ex- officio Librarian, that his administration of it drew from the Legislature 
frequent expressions of its approbation. 

In 1841, Captain Richardson was appointed Adjutant General of the State, 
and to that hitherto neglected department he imparted his characteristic vigor 
and energy. This continued until the act of the Legislature of 1853, which broke 
down the military force of the State. Under Kemper's bill, passed March, 1858, 
he rapidly and thoroughly organized the military forces of the State so that with- 
in less than eighteen months, 143,000 militia had. been. enrolled and organized, 
as appears by the annual report of 1860. At the time of the secession, or rather 
attempted secession of Virginia, she had twenty thousand volunteers uniformed 
and armed. By virtue of his office of Adjutant General, General Richardson 
was a visitor of the Military Institute, and so high an estimate did the society of 
the Alumni place upon his services, that they caused his portrait to be painted 
fey a distinguished artist, and presented it to the Institute. 

At length, after a faithful and laborious service of thirty years in these several 
positions, and when party feeling had grown intolerant, leading to proscription 
&n account of political opinions j and when the Democratic party was greatly in 



1876.] PLANTER AND FARMER. 83 

the ascendant, General Richardson, an old line Whig, in was the year 1852, 
ejected from office, or to speak more correctly, failed of re-election before the 
Legislature. Detesting the arts of the demagogue, a stranger to convivial scenes, 
and with manners too independent, if not stern, to conciliate favor, General 
Richardson owed his elevation entirely to his sterling worth, and his unques- 
tioned business qualifications and habits. He left office as he entered it, with 
clean hands, a clear conscience, and an empty purse. 

The chief design of this sketch, however, is to present him in connection with 
the subject of agriculture — a subject more congenial to his, as it is to our taste, 
and one in which he has signally illustrated his own usefulness, as well as the 
eminent capabilities of his State. 

During his official incumbency, and notwithstanding his numerous and onerous 
duties, he so managed his affairs as to be able to devote a portion of his time 
and attention to agriculture. So true is it that he who systematizes his 
labors, and economizes his time, no matter how exacting the demands of his 
business, will be able to command leisure to devote to a favorite pursuit. It 
was this methodical turn of mind that enabled the great Bacon in the midst of 
his absorbing legal and political occupations, and while conducting numerous in- 
trigues for place, power and wealth, to devote a portion of his time to science 
and philosophy — to write essays on gardening, and to prepare that enduring 
monument of his learning and genius, the Novum Organum. 

In the year 1841, we find General Richardson the proprietor and occupant of 
a farm in the vicinity of Richmond. It was then that he devised and prepared 
a plan for the organization of an Agricultural and Horticultural Society. It was 
chiefly through his active instrumentality that it was carried into successful oper' 
ation. For several years he was an efficient member of the Executive Com- 
mittee, and succeeded the Rev. Jessee H. Turner as President. That eccentric 
but useful man, known to old and young as "Parson Turner," was one of the 
most untiring and successful agriculturists of his day. Plain, honest, sensible, 
and well informed, he did as much to stimulate agricultural improvement as any 
man in Virginia, at that period. The exhibitions of this Society were success- 
ful. After service of one or two years, as its President, General Richardson re- 
signed, and about 1846 the Society went down. On referring to the published 
accounts of its transactions, we find that its most important committee, that 
"on farms," was composed of Wm. H. Richardson, Chairman, Francis Staples 
and Warner W. Guy. A report drawn by the chairman was received with the 
warmest demonstrations of approbation, being copied from the Southern Planter 
into many Northern agricultural journals. The venerable Thomas Ritchie, the 
founder and editor of the Richmond Enquirer, and a member of this Society, 
was so much pleased with this report that he published it in full in his newspaper. 
This report called attention to a class of laborers "hitherto overlooked'' — "the 
men who guide their own ploughs, drive their own produce to market, and in 
time of danger, shoulder their muskets and take the field." It quotes from a 
distinguished prose writer, who remarked of the people of a great commercial 
city of the North, "that there the lawyer looks down upon the merchant, the 
merchant upon the grocer, the grocer upon the green grocer, and the green grocer 
upon the apple woman, who don't care a straw about any of them" — and adds — 
"We trust it is not so among us— but these sturdy citizens of ours, who have as 
much sterling merit and independence of character as any men on earth, who 
regard with indifference or contempt the trappings of wealth and station and ask 



84 THE SOUTHERN [January 

no favor but of the Almighty, have been left to drudge on, generation after 
generation, without any effort to improve or to aid their agricultural 
labors." The report thus concludes: — "Give our people the lights of practical 
knowledge, improve our system of education, our agriculture and our mechanic 
arts, and our old dominion will be once more in the ascendanV — every word of 
which deserves to be written in letters of gold. 

As late even as the period at which this report appeared, October 1841, agri- 
culture in Virginia was in a low state.- The slow and slovenly old modes of cul- 
ture, were unquickened by enterprise, and unresponsive to the imputses that 
had vitalized, improved and expanded agriculture in other less favored sections. 
Virginia had not been without successful farmers, here and there, who availed 
themselves of all the aids of science, and adopted all the modern improvements. 
But to the agricultural masses of the State, science was a sealed volume. New 
ideas were unwelcome, and were even condemned and derided as foolish vaga- 
ries. There had been several distinguished agricultural theorists and writers. 
The celebrated John Taylor, of Caroline, and the scarcely less distinguished 
James M. Garnett, of Essex, had written books and essays on the subject. 
They did not, however, reach the masses, and were unproductive of general re- 
sults. The truth is, that to these speculative minds, agriculture was rather a di- 
version than a business. It afforded recreation to their active and ingenious 
faculties, and constituted a field in which the leisure left by political occupations, ' 
could be pleasantly employed. They were like Athletes, who practiced their 
strength and activities as a pastime. The late Edmund Ruffin was then promi- 
nent as a farmer, and subsequently became the most conspicuous agriculturist in 
the United States. He was not simply a theorist. He was both practical and 
scientific, and his essays- on agricultural subjects are among the most valuable 
contributions that this age has produced. 

General Richardson was not an agricultural theorist or writer. He has not, 
like those first named, published a book ; nor like the last named, Mr. Ruffin, 
can he point to a model farm, but it will not be going too far to ^assert that he 
did more for Virginia agriculture than all that have been, or can be named. He 
did what they could not do. He organized all the influences that they severally 
originated, and carried them among the people. He went from county to county, 
from neighborhood to neighborhood, as the apostle of agriculture, and placed 
himself in contact with the people. How he eame to this, and how effectually 
it was accomplished, we will now proceed to show. 

The spirit of agricultural improvement was abroad in Virginia. What it 
wanted was organization, embodiment and direction. It was struggling and 
panting for the realization of its noble aspirations. Against ignorance, preju- 
dice and, worse than all, indolence, it soon commenced a contest, and sought 
the succor of organization and association, those indispensable aids to all great . 
.and valuable enterprises. 

In January, 1845, by means of strenuous exertions in which General Richard- 
son actively participated, a State Agricultural Convention was held in the State 
Capitol. It was a highly respectable body, in numbers and in character. It or- 
ganized a society, appointed officers, and passed resolutions asking the aid of the 
Legislature. Whether from reasons of State policy, or from indifference, we 
cannot now undertake to say, the aid thus solicited, was not accorded by that 
body. Of the society thus formed, the late venerable Edmund Ruffin was elected 
President. Although the acknowledged head of the farming interests of Vir- 



V 



1876.] 



PLANTER AND FARMER. 



85 



ginia, and a most zealous agriculturist, he for some reason not known to us de- 
clined the office. Andrew Stevenson, who had been speaker of the House of 
Representatives of the United States, and Minister to the Court of St. James, 
was chosen in his place. Although a zealous and skilful farmer, the administra- 
tion of Mr. Stevenson was by no means a success. The enthusiasm manifested 
at the first meeting soon subsided, the Society languished, and by the end of the 
year it had only a nominal existence. In the year following the organization of 
the Society a few members assembled and continued to hold cold and feeble 
meetings until the 18th of February, 1852, when another convention met, but 
smaller in numerical force than that of 1845. The two fragments united, and 
Mr. Ruffin was again elected President. The number of members was three 
hundred and thirty-nine, and the amount of funds collected was $268. Mr. Ruf- 
fin' s administration was directed mainly to the dissemination of practical agri- 
cultural knowledge, as in his opinion the necessary condition precedent to the 
successful advance of agricultural improvement ; and, as a consequence, the 
pages of the Society's trsnsactions were enriched with many valuable essays, 
principally from his pen, but in other respects it was as barren of results as that 
of his predecessor. At the ensuring annual meeting he resigned, and the office 
was conferred upon Colonel, subsequently General Philip St. George Cocke. 
Almost contemporaneously with this, the amotion of General Richardson from 
the office of Secretary of the Commonwealth occurred. Relieved from the 
trammels of office, he was now, fortunately for the agricultural interests of his 
beloved State, in a position to dedicate his time, energy and talents to the ad- 
vancement of those interests. Between himself and Colonel Cocke a warm 
Friendship existed, and they had frequently conversed together upon the subject 
of the failures of the Society, and the causes of those failures. They both con- 
curred in the opinion that the cause to which they were chiefly referable was 
the difficulty of finding a suitable person to canvass the State. No sooner was 
Colonel Cocke apprised of his election to the presidency of the Society, than he 
bethought him of General Richardson, and at once urged upon his acceptance 
the position of Commissioner or General Agent, with the authority to appoint 
Sub-agents, to canvass the whole State. To ensure General Richardson's ac- 
ceptance of this position, the most liberal pecuniary offers were made to him by 
Colonel Cocke, which he declined, but he accepted the position and immediately 
entered upon the canvass, associating with him his son, Win. H. Richardson, 
Jr., Esq. 

To procure the services of a commissioner, was an easy matter. There were 
then, as there are now, many persons who would have esteemed it an honor and 
a privilege to represent the imposing agricultural community in that character ; 
but to get a suitable person — a man of talents, of character, of social standing, 
of untiring activity, and who had the cause of agriculture warmly at heart, was, 
and up to this time had been the difficulty. In General Richardson was pre- 
sented the right man in the right place. Known and respected throughout the 
State, on terms of intimacy with many, and acquainted with nearly all of the 
prominent men in every quarter of it, he was of all men the particular man for 
the occasion. 

As was well said by a newspaper of that day, "This was the master stroke 
which gave vitality to an institution that had hitherto dragged out a sleepy and 
precarious existence." General Richardson engaged in this work with his ac- 
customed energy. A copy of the Rockingham Register of that day says ; il He 






THE SOUTHERN [January 



visited the people at their court-houses, the farmer at his plough, the mechanic 
at his shop, the manufacturer at his loom, and from February to November he 
was busily engaged in traversing the State, and promoting by all possible means 
the interests of the Society. He was everywhere received with cordiality and 
kindness, and excited among the people an enthusiasm that was really extra- 
ordinary." The newspapers caught the enthusiasm. They assisted in promoting 
the good work, and lavished encomiums upon General Richardson for his public 
spirit, energy, and unparalleled success. It may here be mentioned that, owing 
chiefly to his extraordinary efforts within the first nine months of Col. Cocke's 
presidency, the members of the Society increased from three hundred and thirty- 
nine (many of them men of straw) to five or six thousand ; the capital from $268 
to $40,000 ! and through subsequent accretion now amounts to $60,000 ! I* 

The object was to build up a State Society, and in the approaching fall to hold 
a Fair on a scale of magnitude and completeness never before known in the 
South — an industrial exhibition in which not only agriculture, but all of the 
mechanic arts should be represented. These were the instrumentalities by 
which it was coLtemplated to construct an enlightened and general system of 
agriculture. As General Richardson progressed in his travels, he corresponded 
with various newspapers, encouraging the people by stating the incidents and 
results of his efforts, and by picturing the prospects for the contemplated Fair. 
Our space does not admit of the reproduction of these interesting letters. We 
cannot refrain, however, from extracting from the Lynchburg Virginian some 
passages from a letter to his son, who was operating from Lynchburg to the 
Southwest and across into the Alleghany region; "There is plenty of fine 
stock," wrote he, "within convenient access to Richmond ; but that is not all, 
or nearly all, that we must bring out. The industrial products of the State, 
which lie almost concealed in holes and corners, and are beyond anything I had 
conceived, and many of them of surpassing excellence. I have been searching 
them out everywhere, and have 'compassed sea and land ' to get them to the 
Fair. If all come who are pledged to me, we shall be overflowed j but we had 
better have ten stall-pens or compartments too few than one too many. Plows 
of all kinds, harrows, threshing and cleaning machines, drills for small grain, 
with or without plaister or guan*), [attachments] a simple but most effective ma- 
chine for cleaning seed wheat, woolen fabrics of surpassing excellence, from 
negro blankets to fine carpeting, are among the productions of this region. All 
these, with red free-stone dressed for front-steps and side ornaments, I have en- 
gaged to be forthcoming. * * * The Society is seeking to promote, and will 
promote not one only, but all the great interests of the State. Its cause, there- 
fore, is the cause of every work ng man, whether he tills the soil or plies the saw 
and hammer, the spinning jenny and the loom. * * * Stimulate producers 
of every kind to be present at Richmond with specimens of their productions, 
be they what they may." 

In a letter to the Richmond Dispatch, General Richardson said : " My efforts 
are now mainly directed to getting farm stock, agricultural implements, manu- 
factures, specimens of all our industrial as well as agricultural productions to 
the Fair, and getting the people there. I saw long ago that without such ex- 
ertions the Fair would be nothing — it will not grow of itself, but must be worked 
for, and that pretty hard. * * If I am not mistaken about the cattle show, that 



*The first r residential term of Mr. Rnffin was of only ten months duration. He declined a re- 
election at that time on account of physical infirmity. He was subsequently elected annually for 
three years successively.fulfilling the constitutional term, and realizing the highest expectations 
of his friends. 



1876.] 



PLANTER AND FARMER. 



57 



v 



will be the crowning stone of the edifice. The masses must have something 
visible and tangible. * * The annual assembly of so many farmers &nd 
working men of so much intelligence and industry must have an important 
influence upon the great interests of the State." V 

These extracts show the ardor, as well as the enlightened and comprehensive I 
views which inspired the State Commissioner's unflagging efforts. 

The result realized his most sanguine expectations. A more signal success 
never crowned and rewarded industrious and disinterested efforts. That Fair 
exhibited an august spectacle — a great and imposing assemblage of the worth, 
intelligence, wealth and enterprise of the whole State. At no period of her 
history, perhaps, before or since, has there been witnessed such an assemblage 
of the gentry of Virginia. It appeared that by common consent a suspension of 
politics, business and pleasure was determined upon, in honor of this occasion. 
Nor were the graces of female loveliness wanting to complete its attractions. 
The ladies thronged to this city from all portions of the State, and such an array 
of beauty had never been seen in the Old Dominion — the result of which was 
that,matrimony, as well as agriculture, received a powerful stimulus. The ex- 
hibition itself surpassed all expectation, in the display of stock, cattle and agri- 
cultural, horticultural and mechanical productions. The whole State was 
delightfully startled at the unhoped for evidences of its own skill, industry 
and wealth. A season was now inaugurated when agricultural ideas, improve- 
ments and enterprises expelled all other ideas and thoughts from the public 
mind. It may almost be said that agriculture became the point of honor with 
our people. 

The progress made in this State, in the study and practice of agriculture, as 
a science, dates from this epoch. 

The man who bore the chief part in this good work was William H. Rich- 
akdson 1 A tribute more valuable than any we can render him, was paid him 
by President Cocke in his report to the society at its second meeting, October 
31, 1854. From this report we present the following extracts : 

" I have another duty to perform. It is to render to a late valuable, devoted and most efficient 
officer of this Society that lull measure of praise due to him for the part he bore a year ago in 
building up your society, from the agency he had in the successful accomplishment of what had, 
for forty years before, been in vain attempted to be realized. My official position enabled me to 
know better than any one else could know, the duties and labors performed by each officer of 
the executive department of the Society ; in fact, the operations of your Commissioner or General 
Agent, were scarcely known at all to any other member of the Executive Committee than myself, 
and it has happened that whilst others have received the credit and honor due on account of their 
meritorious conduct, he whose effective and devoted labors rank second to those of no other officer 
in the Executive Department of the Society, yet remain to be made known, at least to man}' mem- 
bers of your honorable body. And, as "it is never too late to do right," I shall here " speak 
out that I do know." 1 can assert, without fear of contradiction, that in consequence of the 
ability and uutiring zeal with which the agency was conducted, it proved to be one of th;e main 
levers by means of which was imparted the first successful movement to the whole machinery of 
the ociety. 

" It has been thought and said by some that the General Agent was fully paid for his services, 
by commissions received on money collected. This I know to be as mistaken as it is an unjust 
view of the matter ; and I can confidently state that that officer lost more by the neglect of his 
private business than he received whilst laboring for the Society. Besides, the labors of such 

A MAN IN SUCH A CAUSE, AND IN THE NOBLE SPIRIT WHICH ANIMATED HIM CANNOT BE MEASURED 

OR repaid by money. I happen too to know that whilst all others who served the Society, had 
each some ample means of support, and experienced no material sacrifice of their private affairs, 
it was he alone, who, throwing himself generously into the work, gave up for the time almost 
everything else, whilst canvassing a large portion of the State, aided by Wm. H. Richardson-, Jr., 
at great cost of time and labor, making widely known the purposes and objects of the Society, en- 
listing members and life members, seeuriivg stock and articles for exhibition, obtaining the aid of 
the newspaper press, conciliating the railroad and other transportation companies, spreading his 
correspondence too, over the whole State, through an acquaintance as wide as it was influential, 
and never tiriag in these efforts, even to the last. And I can say that these efforts formed a most 
essential part of the system of executive operations, which caused your first exhibition to result 
an a triumph which led to your first great annual meeting." 

The eminent agriculturist who thus bore his disinterested testimony to the 




THE SOUTHERN [January 




valua^g services of General Richardson, now sleeps beneath the sod. Among 
v -nanj titles to the respect of his fellow citizens, none was more prominent 
,n that founded upon his services in the cause of agriculture. 

From the period to which we have traced him, up to the commencement of 
the war, General Richardson continued to take a lively interest and active part 
in all agricultural movements. We should not omit to mention here, that he 
materially aided in organizing the Petersburg and North Carolina Society in 
1854, believing that every such society was a pillar of support to the whole 
system. War, that formidable enemy of all the forms of peaceful industry, 
that jealous tyrant that claims supreme and exclusive allegiance, arrested the 
onward march of agricultural improvement, and returning peace has, thus 
far, brought no amendment, its first result being the subversion of the labor 
system of the whole South. Chaos now reigns supreme over this fruitful region, 
but we hope we see indications of the dawning of a better day, when a new 
labor system will be organized, and when the seeds sown in that happy era, be- 
fore the war, will produce an abundant harvest. The spirit of improvement 
then awakened, was not extinguished, but simply suspended by the war. 

During the continuance of the war, General Richardson devoted himself to 
his arduous duties as Adjutant General of the State, and at no period of his life 
and in no position in which he has been placed, did he evince greater ability, 
perform more onerous labors or achieve greater results, than in that. 

No sooner did the chaos that sprung from the war begin to assume form and 
organization, than we find this zealous agriculturist again turning his attention 
to his favorite subject. Like the dove, after the subsidence of the waters, ap- 
peared the bearer of the olive leaf. The Richmond Whig of October the 4th con- 
tains a letter from General Richardson, urging the establishment of a first-class 
agricultural journal in this city. In the same article he argues against the 
division and sale of the large landed estates of Virginia, and recommends the 
adoption of measures for settling them with an English or Scotch tenantry. 
With a view to this, he warmly advocates the encouragement of emigration by 
Legislative measures as well as by individual enterprise. The' Legislature of 
I860-' 66 passed an act creating a State Board of Emigration with authority to 
appoint a commissioner, which office was tendered to, and accepted by, General 
R., who conducted a laborious and extensive correspondence, both foreign and 
domestic, until the act was superseded by another passed during the session of 
'73-'74. 

A NEW BOOK ON THE SCIENCE OF AGRICULTURE. 

Messrs. A. S. Barnes & Co., New York, have sent us a copy of a work they 
have just published, entitled " a Text Book of Scientific Agriculture ; with Prac- 
tical Deductions '," by E. M. Pendleton, M. D., Professor of Agriculture and 
Horticulture, University of Georgia. Price, $2.50 postpaid. As far as we have 
been able to examine the book, we find the Doctor has availed himself 'of all the 
trustworthy sources of information, at home and abroad, and that the material 
has been arranged with singular compactness and simplicity, enabling the reader 
to refer to any point discussed with the greatest ease. The work was prepared 
to meet the want existing in the Southern country for something divested of tech- 
nicalities ; something indeed that would prove valuable to the unscientific reader. 

The January "Galaxy" will contain the first part of a new serial story by Wm. 
Black, author of "A Princess of Thule," "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," 



1876.] 



PLANTER AND FARMER. 



89 



\ 



etc., etc. It is called "Madcap Violet." The same number will also contain a 
very important article on our National Surveys, by Capt. Chas. W. Raymond* 
and the English Interregnum," by Justin McCarthy. Articles by Prof. H. H. 
Boyesen and Albert Rhodes will also be found in the same number. \ 

THE AMERICAN FOOD FOR CATTLE— Prepared by Robert Hume.— * 
The attention of ho'rsemen, teamsters, cattle breeders, and graziers, dairy- 
men, poultry, and dog fanciers, &c, is directed to this food. It is a spicy condi- 
ment, possessing many virtues, and has had unusual success wherever used. It 
is put up in a cheap portable form of 30 pound boxes 100 packages, and the 
merciful man can be merciful to his beast at a very cheap rate, and make it pay 
besides. 

Home Corn Sheller. — We call attention to the advertisement of this sheller, 
we have one in use and find it a cheap and handy instrument. The "American 
Agriculturist' '' highly recommends it. 

Mr. J. R. Minter, of Unionville, Sonth Carolina, has some improved cotton 
seed for sale. Any one desiring to improve their cotton would do well to com- 
municate with him in regard to the matter. At the late Union couuty fair Mr. 
Minter received the premium for the largest yield of cotton on one acre (3,000 
pounds picked), also for the largest yield on five acres (12,080 pounds). Our 
next number will contain an article from him on the cultivation of this staple. 

We will publish in our forthcoming numbers the following prize essays given 
by the State Agricultural Society at its last meeting: "Sheep Husbandry," by 
Frank H. Gayford ; "Manures," by Frank H. Gay ford ; "Grasses," by Geo. T. 
Tayloe ; "Experiments with Fertilizers," by Dr. Robert Harrison, of King 
George. 



The improvement in the general tone of the Planter and Farmer, as shown by 
this No. has involved an expense that will render it impossible for us to continue 
this improvement with the subscription price at a figure as low as $1.50 per an- 
num. We have carefully examined the matter in all of its details, and find that 
it cannot be compassed for less than $2, at which price this Journal will hereaf- 
ter be furnished. To clubs of five subscribers, $1.75. To clubs of ten or more, 
$1.60, each. 

The aggregate number of pages for the year will be over 700 ; and this con- 
sidered in companion with the cost of the same number in any other publication, 
will show that the margin left over the expense of paper and printing, is extremely 
reasonable. 

It shall be our aim to submit, from month to month, a journal worthy of the 
Southern Country ; and we claim, at the hands of our friends who have the in- 
terests of these States at heart, their assistance in sustaining, by personal good 
offices, our efforts in this behalf, and beg that you will give us the benefit of a 
good word in your neighborhood. The larger we can make our subscription list, 
the greater addition of valuable^ material we can put into our journal. We pro- 
pose to present not only the experience of our own people, but a general sum- 
mary of agricultural progress elsewhere in this country and in Europe. 

We shall deal with all questions bearing upon the interests of our people with- 
out/ear or favor. Our condition demands the very best at the hands of every 
one of us ; and there is nothing to show that these efforts will be in vain. 

L. R. DICKINSON. 



f 




Market Garden for Sale. 

A/market garden of 10J ACRES of VALUABLE LAND for 



s^e i n Rocketts, 500 yards from corporation limits of Richmond. 



as a 



Two-Story House, with Good Outhouses. 

L^ICTID TEET BlGH. 

PRICE, $4,000. Address, T. L. P.. 

Care " Southern Planter and Farmer," Richmond, Va. 

TIEIIE 



■VIK/O-IIsJ'IJL 




AND 



CIDER MILL 



Is superior to any MILL now made, and more sold annually in 
this market than of all other kinds combined. It does not grate, 
but thoroughly crushes every fruit cell, insuring all cider the apples 
will yield. 

Send for Catalogue. 

CHAS. T. PALMER, 
jy-ly 1526 Main Street, Richmond, Va. 



G. F. WATSON'S 



rti 



RICHMOND. 



J 



Having timber tracts n this State sufficient to last several years, with a complete lumbering 
rafting, and saw-mill organization of fifty men, together with one of the most complete facto- 
ries in the country located in this city, can furnish Poplar and hard wood (no soft pine) low- 
priced FURNITURE as cheap as any factory North or West— and fine Walnut FURNITURE 
cheaper. A stock of one million feet of lumber insures seasoned work, warranted in this and 
every respect. Manufacture MATTRESSES of all kinds. 

Lumber-mill, Indiantown, Va. ; Factory, Rocketts street; lumber-yards, Ash and Popla r 
streets; warerooms, No. 18 Governor (Thirteenth streets,) Richmond. apl 



STOCK FOR SALE. 

Constantly on hand, Short-horn 

BULLS, COWS, AND CALVES, 

of the most approved strains. The pure Bates Bull, 

FIDGET'S OXFORD 12th 

at the head of the herd. 

BERKSHIRE PIGS 

from sows either imported or bred direct from imported 
sire and dam. The recently 

Imported Boar "AYLESBURY CHIEF," 

at the head of the herd. Prices low. Send for Catalogue. 
Hdr 33 Fine Bronze Turkeys, at $6 per pair. 

A. M. BOWMAN, 

■ Dec — 6m Waynesboro, Augusta county, Va. 

GORDON'S FOOD 

FOR 

BORIS & CATTLE. 

TiaE GREAT ECONOMICAL FOOD FOB. STOCK. 

Reduces the cost of feeding, both for cattle and horses, one-fourth. Being a perfectly nutritious, 
health-giving preparation from the seeds of grasses and herbs, in combination with tonic and in- 
vigorating root barks, we claim it to be the one thing needful to make a perfect feed. Horses are 
improved in FLESH, WIND and ENDURANCE. .The principle of the action of the food is thai 
PERFECT DIGESTION produces PURE BLOOD, and uoon this depends HEALTH, and often life 
itself. Cattle intended for the knife fatten more rapidly, and the flesh is more solid. Cows in- 
crease their milk yield at least one-fourth in both richness and quantity, the final result being 
much more butter. GERALD GORDON & CO., Patentees and Proprietors. 

New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. 

SIMPSON, BASS & CO., State Agents, 1327 and 1331 Cary st. t R ichmond, V a. nov~ 

1875. WHOLESALE and aETA.IL.1873. 

500,000 FRUIT TREES. 

Our stock of Fruit and Nut Trees, Grape Vines, Small Fruits, Etc., is large 

and fine. 

THE ORNAMENTAL DEPARTMENT 

is filled with Beautiful Evergreens and Deciduous Trees, Shrubs and Roses, and 

THE GREEN-HOUSE DEPARTMENT 
contains everything desirable for the Conservatory and Flower Garden- 
Prices low, packing well done. Catalogue full. M. COLE & CO. 
Campbell Wallace. 

Moses Cole. Atlanta Nurseries, Atlanta, Georgia* 

Dec— 2m 




I 



SOLUBLE PACIFIC GUANO, 

FO# TOBACCO, CORN AND OTHER CROPS. 

Atfter ten years' continuous use, throughout Virginia and the South, Soluble Pacific Guano has 
acqu/ re( j a reputation for reliability equal to that formerly enjoyed by the Peruvian Guano, and 
theyTquantity used annually exceeds that ol any other fertilizer. 

A It has been the aim of all connected with this Guano to produce the best possible fertilizer at 
%e lowest possible cost, and we claim that the unusual resources and facilities of the manufactu- 
rers have enabled them to approach this more nearly than has been done in any other fertilizer 
witli which we are acquainted. Those who have been using it unite with us in the opinion, that 
by its use the consumer gets 

THE GREATEST BENEFIT FROM THE SMALLEST OUTLAY. 

We offer it with great confidence for use on the Tobacco and other crops to be grown in 1875, 
With the assurance that it is, in all respects, equal to what it has been in the past. 



PURE PERUVIAN GUANO, 

AS IMPORTED. 

We have a full supply of No. 1 Gnanape Peruvian Guano, from the Government 

Agent in New York, selected from one of the finest cargoes ever imported. It is dry and in beau- 
tiful order, and contains within a fraction of 13 per ceiit. of Ammonia, which is within 
two per cent, of what the old Chincha Peruvian used to contain — in fact, it would be difficult to 
tell one from the other. 

We offer these standard and thoroughly tested fertilizers for Tobacco, Corn, and all Spring 
Crops, and are prepared to sell them at such prices as will make it to the interest of consumers and 
dealers to purchase their supplies of us instead of sending their orders to New York, or elsewhere. 

For further information and supplies, address, 

ALLISON & ADDISON, 

mar— tf Seed and Guano Merchants, Bichmond, Va 



« m m$> m& m w <m& w <m m <m § 
E,iOHi^i:onsriD, "v^. 

Pleasantly located on Twelfth Street, facing Bank Street and the Capi- 
tol Square. In the centre of the business portion of the city, within 
one square of the Post Office and Custom House, it is, by its retired 
location opposite the southeast corner of the beautiful park surrounding 
the Capitol of Virginia, the most quiet hotel in Richmond. 

The proprietor having had a life long experience in hotel business — 
first at the Everett House, New York, and afterwards as proprietor of 
the Spotswood Hotel, Richmond, in its best days — and now assisted by 
Mr. JOHN P. BALLARD, the popular veteran hotel-keeper of Vir- 
ginia, assures visitors of the ST. JAMES that no effort on his part will 
be spared to make them comfortable and to keep the house in first-class 
style. Coaches will attend the arrival of all trains. Elegant carriages 
are at all times at the service of the traveling public. 

June T. W. HOENNIGER, Proprietor. 

FAXiXi STYLES, 1874. 

CHARLOTTESVILLE WOOLEN MILLS 

SAMPLE OAEDS 

Are now ready for mailing. Our assortment embraces 

TWENTY-FOUR PATTERNS. 

Merchants desiring samples, will please address, 

CHARLOTTESVILLE WOOLEN MILLS, 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 




CWJSCUP4. WEST. PHIL. 



THE WATT PLOW 

VICTORIOUS ON EVERY FIELD! 

A combined TURNING PLO^, CUL- 
TIVATOR, SUBSOILER, ROW-OPUN- 
ER, PEANUT-DIGGER, TOBACCO and 
COTTON SCRAPER and SWEEP, v 

No CHOKING when bright and smooY n '» 
no LABOR to the plowman; ONE-THIRi^ 
LESS DRAUGHT to the team ; thorough 
BURIAL of Weeds, Grass, &c. : great 
STRENGTH, Durability and Economy in 
its use, and complete pulverization of the 
soil. 

FARMERS WHO USE IT WILL USE 
NO OTHER. 

Awarded all the Premiums at every 
Fair attended in 1873. 

Awarded First Premiums at every 
Fair attended in 1874. 

Virginia State Fair, Richmond-FIRST PREMIUMS ON THREE AND 
FOUR-HORSE PLOWS. 

Right and LeftHand-ALL PREMIUMS AWARDED THEIR SIZES. 

Also at the Plowing Match ALL PREMIUMS AWARDED WHITE PLOW- 
MEN were taken with WATT PLOWS of ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR- 
HORSE SIZES; and COLORED PLOWMAN by ONE, TWO and THREE- 
HORSE SIZES ; being 

SEVEN PREMIUMS OUT OF EIGHT. 

The superior work done by the WATT, and the complete ease with which it is 
handled, was apparent to all. 

NORTH CAROLINA STATE FAIR, Raleigh, October 10th; 

GEORGIA STATE FAIR. Atlanta, October 19th ; 

SOUTH CAROLINA STATE FAIR, Columbia, November 10th : 

STAUNTON, VA., October 13th; 

LYNCHBURG, October 20th ; 

WELDON, N. C, October 20th; 

ORANGEBURG, S. C, November 3rd; 

CHARLOTTE, N. C, November 3rd ; 

DANVILLE, VA., November 3rd; 

POINT PLEASANT, W. VA., October. 

Thus, with its great reputation before, it has gained new laurels this year, 
which must convince every farmer of its vast superiority over other plows. 

We warrant every plow sold to be as represented or to be returned to us. We 
solicit a trial. Catalogues sent to any address. 

WATT & CALL, 

SOLK MANUFACTURERS, 
1452 Franklin St., Richmond, Va. 
Special Agents for " The Best " Spring-Tooth Horse-Rake and Gleaner; also 
for sale of our own manufacture, HARROWS, CULTIVATORS, and all kinds 
of IMPLEMENTS at lowest prices — all warrante d . 




"DOiESTIC 

SEWING 
MACHINES. 



Liberal terms of Exchange 
for Second-hand AiachiueJ 
of every description, 

" DOMESTIC " PAPER FASHIONS. 

The Best Patterns made. Send 5'cts. for Catalogue 

Address DOMESTIC SEWING MACHINE CO.. 

B3T A gents Wanted. "T£8 NEW YORK. 



500,000 GRAPE-VINES FOR SALE. 

CHEAPER than any where else. 
Concord— 1 year, $30 per 1,000; 2 years, 
and extra select 1 year,, $45 to $55 per 
1,000. No one dare undersell me. 

Delaware, Martha, Iona, Diana, Eu- 
melau, Norton, Herbemont, Catawba, 
Croton, Hartford, and all other varieties 
cheaper than anywhere. Also all small 
Fruit Plants. Address Dr. H. Schroder 
Bloomington, Ills. Dec — 2t 




ALBEMARLE NURSERIES, 

p .^ear Greenwood Depot, C. & O. R. R., Va. 

October 13th, 1875- 

TO THE PUBLIC: 

In estimation of the constantly increasing interest manifested in the 
culture of fruits in Virginia, I desire for a mutual benefit to extend and 
make more widely known my occupation and facilities to supply RE- 
LIABLE FRUIT STOCK at moderate prices. 

This being one of the oldest establishments of the kind in Virginia, 
which has never changed proprietors in a quarter of a century of its ex- 
istence, I claim a practical skill in propagation, and an acquaintance 
with successful varieties, unexcelled in Piedmont Virginia. And when 
it is remembered that this is locally the heart of the great fruit-growing 
region of the South, it must be pre-eminently, the place to obtain the 
most reliable fruit stock. But the great wonder is (as I have been told 
to the prejudice of the reliability of my stock,) how I can afford to sell 
good and reliable trees so much lower than the same sort of stock can be 
had at our city nurseries. I will tell to all how I can afford to take 
only a fair price for my goods : I am at less expense to live and grow 
my stock in the country than those who live in and conduct near a city ; 
I deal directly with my customers without the intervention of agents, 
clerks'and foremen at high salaries and costly outfits, and, therefore, save 
to my customers from 50 to 75 per cent, which is credited to them on my 
prices, and they get the benefit of all that which would go to pay the 
agents, &c, so the net proceeds is not far from being the same at last, 
but the difference to the purchaser is great. I am pleased to say that I 
have a thrifty and handsome stock of most of the leading kinds of 
" APPLES," including about 10,000 WINE SAP Si to 7 feet, 2 and 3 
years old, at $10 per 100; 1 year, 2 to 3 \ feet, $6 per 100. The stock 
of WINE SAP, I learn, is about exhausted elsewhere for this season in 
Virginia. 

Of Dwarf Apple I have a great variety, 3 and 4 years old, 25 cents 
each. My new Piedmont Pippin Dwarl, and Extra Standard, $1 each. 
No such apple as this has been introduced in this country lately. It re- 
sembles Albemarle Pippin, but the tree is different, being a much better 
grower. I possess the entire stcck. This is priced high enough for those 
who have doubted my stock on account of low prices. 

PEACH TREES. — Common choice early and late kinds from Hale 
Early to White Heath Cling ; 1 year, 3| to 4 feet, 15 cents each, $13 per 
100 ; Early Beatris, Louis Rivers and Fosters, 25 cents each, $20 per 100. 

PEARS. — Standard and Dwarf, 50 cents each. 

CHERRIES. — Standard and Dwarf, 50 cents each. 

Terms. — One-half the amount cash with the order; balance on Od 
livery. If all the bill is sent with the order, if to the amount of $3e- 
and upwards, I will pay the freight charges through to the purchasers 
depot. 

Send remittances by registered letter, P. O. Order, Bank Check, or 
Express prepaid, at my risk. And direct all orders and communica- 
tions to JOHN DOLLINS, 

Greenwood Depot, C, & O. R. M., Va. 



G. W. ROYSTER. J. B. LIGHTFOOT. 

Commission Merchants, 

Solicit Consignments of Tobacco, Grain, Flour and Produce Generally 

Refer by Special Permission to J. W. Lockwood, Cashier National Bank of 
Va., Richmond; Isaac Davenport, Jr., Pres. First National Bank, Richmond. 
Grain Bags furnished on application. augly 

ASK FOR THE 

'LOCKWOOD HOE." 

BLADE ALL STEEL. 

Eye malleable iron. Every Hoe warranted 
Best Hoe for general use in the market. The 
Hoe for merchants to sell, because it gives 
satisfaction. 

Manufactured by 

BALTIMORE STEEL HOE WORKS, 

and O. H. HICKS & CO. 




For Sale by the trade generally, 
nov 6m 



BUCKEYE MOWER AND REAPER, 

Sweepstakes Thresher and Cleaner. 



n 



ura Miieuif oiii mm, 



Best, Cheapest and most Economical Engine in the market. 

Circular Saw Mills ; Mill Stones, Bolting Cloths, Eureka and other 
Smut Machines ; Belting, Spindles, Mill Picks, Portable Farm and 
Grist Mills. 

Cucumber Wood Pumps with Patent Cast Iron Cylinder. War- 
ranted best and most durable Pump in the market, &c, &c. 

JOSHUA THOMAS, 

53 Light Street, Baltimore, Md. 

Jl^^Prices and Descriptive Circulars furnished on application, 
novly 



FARMERS AND DEALERS 





PURE BONE FLOUR, 

PURE DISSOLVED BONE ASH, 

Pure Dissolved Raw Bone, 

66° Oil Vitroil, German Potash Salts, 
Pure Chemicals for making Superphos- 
phate at the lowest market price. 

Call at R. J. BAKER & COS. 



Aug— ly 



BALTIMORE, 1MI3 




THE AMERICAN FOOD FOR CATTLE 

Invaluable fop Horses, Cows, Sheep, Pigs, Poultry and Dogs. 

To breeders training cattle for the show-yard or for sale, it is essential. It 
produces flesh, hair, milk and wool. It is conducive to health, cleanliness and 
good condition. For the diseases of Poultry it is a specific. 

ROBT. HUME, Manufacturer, 

Jan— 3t Office and Depot: No. 18 Fifteenth street, Richmond, Va. 





66 



LINDEN 

GROVE." 



%*$fc>, : - -0 L t0P A-T R Al .-'.'^^«8 



^JmportrihrnLt Oivned b'y.T.S. Coo/jor ^!m$$ 
^XiritfenGroveJCooperslurgh^Lefti'gh Co, Pan^ 



BERKSHIRES! 



The SALLIE, SWEET SEVENTEEN, STUMPEY and SNIPED 

families, bred to perfection 

At " LINDEN GKROVE." 



Having lately received two importations of Berkshires, of first-class 
blood, among which were Stewart's Gem, Stewart's Duchess and Stewart's 
Pride, which won first prizes at Gloucestershire Agricultural Society, at 
Cirencester, Eng., and also prizes at other leading shows in England — 
there were also other prize-winners among the lot, such as the 1st Duke 
of St. Bridge, winner of 1st prize at Croydon, England, and other noted 
shows, and pronounced by experienced judges to be the finest boar ever 
seen on exhibition — these, in addition to my last May's importation, give 
me one of the finest and most valuable herds of Berkshires in England 
or America — if not in the world — and I am prepared to furnish pigs of 
all ages, sired by Plymouth (the highest priced Berkshire boar ever sold 
in England or America), Othello 1st and 2nd Dukes of St Bridge, and by 
Mark Antony, out of my grand imported prize-winning sows, at reasona- 
ble prices. 

Address, 

T, S, COOPEK, 

"[Linden Grove," 
Coopersburg, Lehigh county, Pa. 

P. S.— My Prize sow Sallie XI. (Royal Beauty), winner of 1st prizes 
at the Royal Show, England, '74, 1st prize in her class at Ohio State 
Fair and Cleveland, and winning sweepstakes in a large and hotly con- 
tested ring at both Fairs in '74, has at present a litter of 8 pigs (7 boars 
and 1 sow) which are now 8 weeks old, and sired by imp. 2nd Duke of 
St. Bridge, which I will sell when three months old, boxed and delivered 
at our express office, with feed for journey, for $50 per head. In her 
last litter she had 8 pigs ; two of which — Sambo XL and Sallie XIV. — 
were got up for the shows, and won first prizes at .the leading shows'in 
the West. The boar won 1st prize in his class at the following fairs : 
Ohio State Fair, Indiana State Fair, Cleveland and St. Louis ; also 
sweepstakes at Cleveland and at the world's show at St. Louis, as best 
boar of any age or breed. The sow won sweepstakes at Cleveland, in a 
large class, as best sow of any age or breed ; also lst_prize at other local 
shows. 

My imported prize-winuing sows, Stewart's Gem and Duchess have lit- 
tered seven pigs each since their arrival, the largest, finest and best 
formed pigs I ever mind seeing. They were sired in England by Capt. 
Arthur Stewart's prize boar. 

The young pigs will be for sale when'three months old. — T. S. C, 
6 




a:* best 
hand 
Sheller 
for fam 



ily use in the market. 

Every Machine Warranted. Price, 
$2.50, shipped by express, safely boxed, 
on receipt of price. Every farmer needs 
it. Live agents wanted. Send for de- 
scriptive circular to Livingston & Co., 
Iron Founders, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
jan 




jan — It 



ROSES FOR THE MILLION! 

Twelve choice Roses, assorted colors, 
by mail, for One Dollar. Descriptive 
lists sent free. Tyra Montgomery, 
Mattoon, 111. jan — 3t 

THE 100 DAYS TOMATO. 

Actually ripens in one hundred days. 
Earliest Good Tomato Ever Offered. 
Free from rot ; ships well ; remarkably 
prolific. $419. 50 sold from one-fourth 
acre. Positive proof of these claims in 
free circular. 25 cents per packet; 5 
for $1.00; post-paid. Address, J. A. 
Foote, Seedsman, 512 Main St., Terre 
Haute, Ind. jan— 2t 



FLOWER 
SEEDS. 

Vegetable 
SEEDS. 



Spooner's Prize Flower 

Seeds. 

Spooner's Boston Market 

Vegetable Seeds. 

The cheapest and best 
seeds in the market. Send 
two 3 cent stamps for our 
illustrated catalogue and 
the prices. W. H. Spoo- 
ner, Boston, Mass. 

jan — 2t 



FARM FOR SALE. 

A fine Grass Farm of 720 acres, in 
Pittsylvania county, Va.; admirably 
adapted to sheep raising ; which will be 
sold cheap. Address Editor of Planter 
and Farmer. jan 



FOR SALE. 

I offer for sale, a thoroughbred pair 
of Essex Hogs, aged ten and twelve 
months. The sow has taken the boar. 
These hogs are very beautiful, and come 
from the best imported stock. 

C. M. Robinson, 
P. O. Box, 157, Richmond, Va. 
jan — 2t 



WILLOW BANK STOCK FARM. 

I am breeding Devon cattle, Merino sheep and 
Berkshire pigs, of pure blood and choice quality. 
My cattle are bred from the importations of C. 
S. Wainwright, and Hon. Ambrose Stevens. They 
are choice breeders and prize-winners. Have 
taken in the three seasons past, eight herd prizes 
and over sixty individual prizes in Iowa, Illinois 
and New York. My sheep and pigs also are of 
strictly first quality. 

Also White Leghorn Chicks. Prices reasona- 
ble and satisfaction given. B. F. PECK, East 
Bethany, Genesee County, N. Y. jan — ly 



The Inmroyefl Evergreen Broom-Corn. 

The result of five years experimenting. — The 
improved Evergreen Broom-corn grows to a me- 
dium height, brush good length, fine and straight 
yields much better and will bxing one-third more 
money in the market than any other variety, 
making from 7 to 10 hundred pounds of brush 
and 40 bushels seed to the acre. Seed is worth 
more than oats for feeding. 

A sample of seed and brush can be seen at the 
office of. Planter and Farmer. By mail on receipt 
of price (with full directions how to cultivate), 
50 cents quart, 4 quarts $1.50 by express, the buy- 
er paying expressage; $2 per peck; $6 a bushel. 
Two quarts will plant one acre. Address, 

SAMUEL WILSON, 
jan— 2t Mechanicsville, Buck's County, Penn. 



CHAMPION GRAPE. 

The earliest, good market grape cul- 
tivated, ripens ten to twelve days earlier 
than Hartford, bunches large, berries 
large and compact, no mildew, very 
hardy. Send for free descriptive circu- 
lar to J. S. Stone, Charlotte, Monroe 



county, N. Y. 



jan — 4t 



VINEGAR. 

HOW MADE IN TEN HOURS, 
from Cider, Wine, Molasses, Sorghum 
without using drugs. Address F. 1. 
SAGE, Vinegar Maker, Springfield, 
Mass. Dec— 3t 

100 FARMERS WANTED 

during the winter, to engage with us in 
business, paying 100 dollars per month. 
For full particulars, address J. C. Mc- 
Curdy & Co., Philadelphia, Pa. ' 
Dec— 3t 



1876-Postpaid-$:L60 



THK NURSERY, 
A Monthly Magazine for Young Read- 
ers. Superbly Illustrated. *@=Send 10 
cents for a Sample Number. Subscribe before 
November, anJ get tbe last three numbers of 
this year F ti EE. 

JBBCIW 30. SBCBH.DB1T, 

nov 36 Broom field Street, Boston. 



ii mmiB mm 



AND AGRICULTURAL CHEMICALS. 

BL\ J. iJAliliJK, «& J3IfcO. 

215 Pearl St,, NEW YORK. 

Importers and dealers in strictly first quality 
FERTILIZERS. 

Special fertilizers for particular crops. 

GEO. B. FORRESTER, Manager of this de- 
partment oct 

FINE IMPORTED ENGRAVINGS. 

(Large 3ize) for framing or for porfolios. 

This catalogue of engravings comprises a list 
of elegant works, from the best American and 
European artists. Every variety of subject is 
represented— Portraits, Landscapes, Animals, 
Figures, Marine Views, and Historical Pictures, 
from such well known artists as LANSEER, 
HERRLNG, WILKE, ROSA BONHEUR, and 
others. 

Over 700 Different Subjects. 

They are of all sizes, from 12x15 to 26x40, 
and can be sent by mail or express, prepaid 
carefully done up in roller, and without injury 

Price from $1 to $10, according to size. 

ti@=>A discount made on large purchases. 

CATALOGUES SENT FREE TO ANT ADDRESS 

E. R. PELTON, Publisher, 25 Bond Street 
New York. d e-2 t 

PREMIUM FARM GRIST 

MILL. 
Is simple, cheap and dura- 
ble, and grinds all kinds of 
grain rapidly. It is adapted to all kinds 
of horse powers. Send for descriptive 
circular. W. L. Boyer & Bro., Phila- 
del phia, Pa. Dec — 3t 

DAMAGED HAY AND OATS 
Generate Worms and cause Colic. Dr. 
Taylor's Horse Powders are indispensa- 
ble in such cases, and are certain to 
have the desired effect, They are also 
a first-rate Tonic for Horses recovering 
from Epizooty. Price by mail, 25 cts. 
Address Dr. J. B. Taylor, Ivy Depot, 
Va. Dec — ly 

ELLERSLIE FARM. 

THOROUGHBRED HORSES, 
HALF BRED HORSES, 
PURE SHORTHORN CATTLE, 
IMPROVED BERKSHIRES 

For sale. Address 

R. J. HANCOCK, 
oct Overton, Albemarle co.,Va. 




BUI GENERIS 




MaTo* WlMUl* 



MASON & HAMLIN 

CABINET ORGANS. 

UNEQUALEDSXUNAPPRO ACHED 

in capacity and excellence by any others. Awarded 



« DIPLOMA OP HONOR « 

VIENNA, 1873; PARIS. 1867. 

ft MB V American Organs ever awarded any medal 
till L I in Europe, or which present such extraordi- 
nary excellence as to command a wide sale there. 
A I VII A YC awarded highest premiums at Indna- 
HLIB H I M trial Expositions,"in America as well as 
Europe. Out of hundreds there have not been six in 
all where any other organs have been preferred. 
DEQT Declared by Eminent Musicians, in both 
OEw 1 hemispheres, to be unrivaled. See 
TESTIMONIAL CIRCULAR, with opinions of more 
than One Thousand (sent free). 
I&SC8CT on having a Mason & Hamlin. Do not 
IllUfU 9 take any other. Dealers get larger com- 
missions for selling inferior organs, and for tlus 
reason often try very hard to sell something else. 
lUElil? CTVIEC with most important improve- 
filLlff «8 iLlLU ments ever made. New- 
Solo and Combination Stops. Superb 
JEtagere and other Cases of new designs. 

PIANO-HARP CABINET ORGAN £ 

quisite combination of these instruments. 

EASY PAYMENTS. 2S3g££Si£ 

payments; or rented until rent pays for the organ. 
PSTAI (fUPBHITO and Circulars, with fullpartic- 
UH B WIULSUCO ulare.free. Address MASON & 
HAMLIN ORGAN CO., 154 Tremont Street, BOS- 
TON; 25 Union Square, NEW YORK; or 80 & 82 
Adams St., CHICAGO. 



BEBT ANU CHEAPEST M( LSE, 
Have taken over 300 Premiums at 

rs throughout the South. Send for 
illustrated Catalogue with. 
Price List,and certificates 
of planters who use them. 
sole manufacturers: 

BRINLY, MILES & HARDY 

Louisville, Ky. 




FOR SALE. 

A Scotch Shepherd Dog For Sale— 
Nearly grown — Price, $5. Address 
Editor Planter and Farmer. Also sev- 
eral pups same price. 



flra 



D03LZ 



FOR ONE DOLLAR! 

We will send, postage-paid, 

THE WEEKLY WOKCD ! 

1. It contains ALL THE NEWS of the past seven days, collected by the 
agents and correspondents of the New York Daily World, and in fullness, accu- 
racy and enterprise in this respect is unequalled. 

2. Its AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT contains the latest news of farm 
experiments at home and abroad, contributions by home and foreign writers," 
full reports of the Farmers' Club of the American Institute, and quotations of 
valuable and interesting articles appearing in the agricultural weeklies and maga- 
zines. 

3. Its GRANGE NEWS, to which attention is specially called, is a feature 
which can be found in no other paper. All the resources at the command of a 
great metropolitan daily newspaper are employed in its collection, and the result 
is a page each week where the members may find a complete record of the work 
of the Order in every State in the Union for the past seven days. In addition to 
this weekly record, The World gives the cream of all the local Grange papers in 
every State. This department is and will continue to be under the charge of one 
of the active members of tlie Order. 

4. For the FIRESIDE DEPARTMENT, in addition to its other attractions, 
Such as poetry, miscellany, humorous extracts, &c, during the coming year, there 
will be not less than one hundred short tales by the best writers of fiction in Eng- 
land and America. 

5. The MARKET REPORTS, brought down to the hour of publication, are 
the best that can be made. Each market is reported by one whose special knowl- 
edge and training make him the best authority upon that subject in the United 
States. For accuracy and completeness the market reports of The World are 
unrivalled. 



11 The World is not only the best but the cheapest newspaper ever offered the 
farmer." 



SEMI- WEEKLY (104 Nos.) $2 a Year. 

Specimen copies sent on application. 



Address, 
Jan — It 



DAILY (313 ICos.) $10 per year. 

"THE WORLD," 35 Park Row, New York. 



THE SOUTHZZEZR,!^ 

PLANTER # FAKME R, 

TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM. 



CLUBS OF FIVE OB. MORE $1.75 E.A.CH. 



i 1 Unquestionably the best sustained 
work of the kind in the world." 

harper'sIagazine. 

ILLUSTRATED. 

NOTCES OF THE PRESS. 

The ever increasing circulation of this 
excellent monthly proves its continued 
adaptation to popular desires and needs. 
Indeed, when we think into how many 
homes it penetrates every month, we 
must consider it one of the educators as 
well as entertainers of the public mind. 
boston Globe. 

The character which this Magazine 
possesses for variety, enterprise, artis- 
tic wealth, and literary culture that 
has kept pace with, if it has not led the 
times, should cause its conductors to re- 
gard it with justifiable complacency. 
The Magazine has done good and not 
evil all the days of its life. — Brooklyn 
Eagle. 

Some of the most popular of modern 
novels have first appeared as serials in 
this Magazine. In all respects, it is an 
excellent periodical and fully deserves 
its great success. — Philadelphia Ledger. 

TERMS. 

Postage free to all Subscribers in the 
United States. 

Harper's Magazine, one year $4 00 

$4.00 includes prepayment of U. S. 
postage by the publishers. 

Subscriptions to Harper's Magazine, 
Weekly and Bazar, to one address for 
one year, $10.00 ; or, two of Harper s 
Periodicals, to one address for one year, 
$7.00 : postage free. 

An extra copy of either the Magazine, 
"Weekly, or Bazar will be supplied 
gratis for every Club of Five Subscri- 
bers at $4.00 each, in one remittance ; 
or, Six copies for $20.00, without extra 
copy ; postage free. 

Back numbers can be supplied at any 
time. 

A complete set of Harper's Maga- 
zine, now comprising 51 volumes, in 
cloth binding, will be sent by express, 
freight at expense of purchaser, for 
$2.25 per volume. Single volumes, by 
mail, postpaid, $3.00. Cloth cases, for 
binding, 58 cents, by mail, postpaid. 



A complete analytical index to the 
first fifty volumes of Harper's Maga- 
zine has just been published, rendering 
available for reference the vast and va- 
ried wealth of information which con- 
stitutes this periodical a perfect illus- 
trated literary cyclopedia. 8vo, Cloth, 
$3.00; Half Calf, $5^25. Sent postage 
prepaid. 

A series of papers under the title of 
"The First Century of the Republic,]' 
contributed by the most eminent Ameri- 
can publicists in Harper's Magazine. 
This series of over twenty papers gives 
a comprehensive review of progress 
during the century now closing, in every 
department of our national life. 

Newspapers are not to copy this ad- 
vertisement without the express order 
of Harper & Brothers. 

Address Harper & Brothers, 

New York. 



you wish to grow Vegetables for sale» 
read & 

Gardening for Profit! 

If you wish to become a Commercial Florist, 
read 

Practical Floriculture ! 

If you wish to Garden for Amusement or 
for Home Use only, read 

Gardening for Pleasure ! 

ALL BT 

Peter Henderson. 

Price $1.50 each, post-paid, by mail. 

■ 

Our Combined Catalogue for 1876, of 

EVERYTHING 

FOR THE 

GARDEN! 

Sent Free to all Applicants. 



Our large Illustrated Catalogues of Seeds 
and Plants, numbering 175 pages, and con- 
taining 2 colored plates, sent without charge 
to purchasers of any of the above three 

[books. Sent to all others on receipt of 50 

| cents. 

35 Cortlandt Street, 

NEW YORK. 



dec— 4t 



TEEMS OF ADVERTISING IN PLANTER AND FARMER. 



One square, 10 lines or less, one insertion. ..$2 00 

1 square of ten lines for six months 10 00 

1 square of ten lines for one year 15 00 

% page six months 30 00 

% page one year. 55 00 



Yz page six months $55 00 

y 2 page one year 100 O9 

1 page, single insertion 20 00 

1 page, six months 100 00 

1 page, one year 180 00 



Outside back Cover, double rates ; inside back Cover, 50 per cent, added to rates. No advertise- 
ments taken for front cover. No editorial notice given to advertisements on any consideration 
but notices, &c. may be put in Publishers' Department at contract prices. 

No charge for advertisements of less than two dollars. 



Great Closing-Out Sale ! 

Preparatory to making our Spring Purchases. 

Excellent Calicoes et 6£, 8£, and 10c. per yard ; Plaid Cambrics, yard wide, at 
12£c per yard, worth 20c. ; Wash-Poplins at 10, 12J, and 16§ c per yard, all 
worth 25 per cent. more. 

Handsome Plaid Dress Goods at 20, 25, 30. 35, and 40c. per yard — a reduction 
of from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent, has been made in these goods. 
Best quality Hamilton Tycoon Reps at 20c. per yard, worth 30c. ; a large lot 
of Remnanis of Dress Goods at a sacrifice ; 

Elegant double- width Plaids, for over-suits, at $1.25 and $1.50 per yard, worth 
$1.75 and $2 ; Black Alpacas at 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 75, 85c, and 
$1 per yard, the best goods for the money ever offered in this city; 

Black Silk-Finish Mohair at 50, 60, and 75c., worth 85c. and $1 per yard, as 
handsome as' a silk, and all very cheap ; Australian Crepes at 50, 60, and 75c, 
worth 65, 75c, an-> $1 per yard ; 

Black French Merinos and Cashmeres in all quantities at greatly reduced prices ; 
Black and Colored Silks in all quantities at extraordinary bargains ; all other 
styles of Dress Goods at reduced prices ; 

Lonsdale Cambric at 15c per yard; Knight's Cambric, 33 inches wide, at 10c. 
per yard. 

Utica 9-4 Bleached Sheeting at 33£c, 10-4 at 35c, and 12-4 at 40c — these prices 
are lower than ever offered before ; full-width Bleached and Unbleached Sheet- 
ing at 25c per yard ; 

Red Twilled Flannels, all wool, at 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50c per yard — from 10 to 
15c per yard below regular prices ; Blue Twilled Flannel at same prices ■; Gray 
Twilled Flannel from 25 to 50c per yard ; White Twilled Flannel at 30, 40, 
50c per yard ; 

Plain White, Red, Yellow, and Gray Flannels from the lowest to the best quali- 
ties ; Embroidered White Flannel ; 

Colored Blankets at $1.50, $2, $2.50, and up to $6 a pair; White Blankets at the 
best bargains ever offered. We beat the best auction out of sight on these 
goods ; 

Calico Comfortables— home made— at $1.50, $1.75, $2, $2.50, and $3, all made 
of good calico and quilted with pure cotton ; Three, four and five-thread Un- 
bleajhed Knitting Cotton at 30c per pound ; White Knitting Cotton, in balls, 
all sizes from six to twenty, at 60c per pound ; 

Carpet Warp in all colors, the best manufactured, at $1.75 per bundle of 5 lbs. ; 
Cotton Yarns, all sizes from four to twelve, at $1.15 per bundle of 5 lbs. 

Corsets in all qualities, from 40c to $6 per pair. We call particular attention to 
our 110-bone Corsets at $1.15 per pair, worth $1.75 ; Excellent two- button Kid 
Gloves at 75c and $1 per pair, and four-button Kid Gloves at $1.50 per pair. 

Pure Linen Table-Cloths, two yards long, at $1, worth $1.50; Linen Doilies at 
60, 75c, and $1 per dozen, worth 75c,, $1, and $1.20; Linen Napkins at $1, 
$1.25, $1.50, and up to $6 per dozen; Huckaback Towels at $1.50, $2, $2.25, 
$2.50, $3, and up to $12 per dozen — all extremely cheap; 

Carpets in great variety — Brussels, new patterns, at $1.20, worth $1.35 ; Ingrain 
Carpets from 40c up to $1 per yard. We call attention to the all-wool carpet 
75c, worth $1 ; and the $1 carpet, which is the best two-ply made, worth $1.25. 

Oil Cloths very cheap — some as low as 40c per yard for good styles ; 

Linen-finish Diaper at $1.10, worth $1.50 apiece ; at $1.25, worth $1.75 apiece. 
Cotton Diaper, soft finish, at $1 apiece ; Linen Collars for ladies at 75c and 

[ $1 per dozen, worth double the money; Linen Cuffs at 25c a pair; Shawls of 
every description in endless variety, all at lower prices than ever. Mourning 
Shawls a specialty. Hemstitched Handkerchiefs at $1.50, $2, $2.50, $3, and 
up to $'; per dozen — exceedingly cheap ; Tape-border Linen Handkerchiefs at 
75c, $1, $1.25, and up to $3 per dozen — all very cheap ; Rich Silk Neck Scarfs 
at 25, 35, 50c, and up to $1.25 — particular attention is called to the ties at 57 
and 60c ; Knit Jackets, with and without sleeves ; Breakfast Shawls, Hoods, 
Caps, Nubias, Pulse- Warmers, and warm Gloves. 
Parties ordering goods to be sent by mail will please enclose postage. We 

have but one price, and sell for cash. Goods sent by express C. O. D., or as 

directed, upon the receipt of the money or its equivalent. 

LEVY BROTHERS'. 
Jan 1017 and 1019 Main street, Richmond, Va. 




W&CO'* 






r ill be 
mailed /ree 
all a_n p 1 i - 
ts. This is 
me of the largest 
Imostcomprehen- 
Oatalogues pub- 
lished; contains about 250 
i-es, over <KiO fine engrav- 
^elegant colored plates, 
drives full descriptions, 
. nee;;, and directions for plant- 
ug over 1'jdo varieties of Vegetable 
ind Flower Seeds, Bedding Plants, 
osW&c.and is invaluable to Farmer, 
ciardener and Florists. Address, 

D. M. FERRY & CO., 
Seedsmen and Florists, DETROIT, Mien. 



I 



Alien's t'ianeiui' 
SILVER 
MEDAL 



flan A Seed Drills and nkhocl Hoes. - 




■fected /or 76. :' 
no pac, •>«</ of aeeU i" tnc 



ie.'7.es'. 



They "sow like a charn, 

crushing it, no pauSing}L T waS fa al (.gg eiKls, no irregularity 
•Jcpth, no springs or ge(\^ nr . t0 wear ou t, i wo "sMjpa.Jrftto noise 
«o tyitaJ / Tire Double WjLi K " KL Hoe works easier Betted andfron 
*ix'o twelve times faster tll n tha ^and hoe; ofwn saving the gar 
tlei)H-$ „0 i/i a season; fl*ishes *u)0 re*a af-wicc, when 6, 9,or H 
inc I ds apart. Four pair! oi hoRS . blades tempered steel. Wi 
mas ■ au admirable CombinVj D ij ac ,iik3 possessing nearly all ttr 
exctilenoics of the separate y, n & So vegetable garden, howevc 
small, should be without oife. Our New Hoesb Hoe, per fee te. 
after ten years of experiment, saves moat of the hoeing and make 
the remainder easy ; leaves Ih>' ground level or ridged, as desired 
vpensfvrows, hills, and culilivat.es shallow or deep^and is a thoi 
tmgh w^ed killer ; should b& owned by every farmer. Full De 
ecriptive Circulars and Testimonials free. Mention this paper 
8. L. ALLRN <fe CO., Sole Manr'rs, No. 119 S. 4th St., Philada. 
Pa. W<> w us* have u Live Agent In Every Town. 

.dec— fit 

WALNUT GROVE FARM. 



THOROUGHBRED and GRaDE JERSEY 
CATTLE. BERKSHIRE and ESSEX SWINE 
BRONZE TURKEYS and BRAHMA FOWLS] 

I took 1st premium on Thoroughbreds, (Male 
and Female,) and 1st premium on Grade Jerseys, 
also, 1st on Bronze Turkeys at Va. State Agicul- 
tural Society, 1874. 

Prices moderate — Satisfaction Guaranteed. 
Address, 

G. JULIAN PRATT, 

mar — ly Waynesboro, Augusta go. , Va. 

KILLIN&LY, CONN. 
Offers for sale a few Superior PART- 
RIDGE, COCHIN and PLYMOUTH 
ROCK CHICKS, at reasonable prices. 
Also, White Fantail PIGEONS. oc 

IV. GU1LBERT, 
Evergreen Farm, Gwynedd, Pa., 
Importer and Breeder of Improved Blooded Live 
Stock, Horses, Cattle, Cotswold and Southdown 
Sheep, Chester, Berkshire and Yorkshire Pigs, 
Toulouse. Bremen and Hong Kong Geese, White 
Cnina, Wild, Cavuga, Rouen, Avlesburv and 
Musk Ducks, Bronze, Blue, Buff and White Tur- 
keys, Dorkings, Brahma, Cochin, Guinea and all 
other Fowl, Deer, Swans, Peacocks, Pigeons, 
Eggs, &c„ at low prices. Best Breeds of Dogs 
and Maltese Cats, Rabbits, j'Ferrets, Guinea Pigs, 
White Mice, &c. Fine Milch Cows alwavs on 
nd. Dec 




I have founded my business on the belief that 
the public are anxious to get their seed direcl/.y 
from the grower, and I therefore offer free to 
every man and woman in the United States who 
cultivates a farm, tills a vegetable garden, or 
plants a flower garden, my large, Illustrated 
Catalogue of Vegetable and flower Seeds for 
1876 ; it contains, in addition to the choicest 
kinds produced in Europe, one hundred and fifty 
varieties of Vegetable seed grown on my four seed 
farms. Customers of last season need not. write 
for it. As the original introducer of the Hub- 
bard, Marblehead and Butman Squashes, Phin- 
ney's Melon, the Marblehead Cabbages, and a 
score of other new vegetables, I solicit your pat- 
ronage. All seed soldunder three warrants. A 
hundred thousand catalogues will be issued and 
sent out first of Januarv. 

JAMES J. H. GREGORY. 

De-4t Marblehead, Mass 

TuoroilM Stock for Sale, 

I am breeding Thoroughbred Devon 
Cattle, Poland China, and Essex Hogs, 
South Down Sheep, &c. Also Light 
Brahma Fowls, and have for sale seve- 
ral pairs of White and Black Guineas. 
Persons ordering from me can rely on 
getting as good stock as any in this 
country. My herd of Devons are of 
the most improved strains. They took 
7 first premiums at our last Virginia 
State Fair. For further particulars, 

F. W. CHILES, 

feb — 6m Louisa C. H., Va. 

^RESH 

GARDE ff and FIELD SEED 
At the old stand cf Palmer & Turpin, 
1526 Main street, Richmond, 
Orchard Grass, 

Timothy, Herds, Clover, 

Kentucky Blue Grass. 
Send for Catalogue, 
feb-tf W. H. TURPIN 



NURSERY STOCK. 

FALL, 1875. 

We desire to call the attention of Nurserymen 
and Dealers to our exceedingly large, thrifty, 
and great variety of stock for Fall trade. 

Special inducements offered in standard, 
Dwarf and Crab Apples; Standard and Dwarf 
Pears, Cherries, Gooseberries, Currants, Elms, 
Maples, Evergreens, Shrubs and Roses. 

Correspondence Solicited. 

SMITH & POWELL, 

Syracuse Nurseries, Syracuse, N. Y 




W 8 a a- L. .. 

FARM IMPLBME, 

the beat e *°?* added to »ur We stock of implants 

. FARM AND ROAD WAG 

made in this country, which we cau reoo^n^TTrto ev e 

STROU, LIGHT-RUNNING AND 

and what is of equal interest to purchasers, are a marvel ofW 
wa«fnTh^ nt ^ em f ° r !' Welve months - Farmers and merchf who have to 
bTvi!,L P « M and *S? ds Wil1 save 25 P er cent - of theiiiling expenses 
SLrff 118 ; , We S ua ™ntee entire satisfaction tofry purchaser, 
prices circulation a small wagon catalogue, with description and 

STOCK-FAEMEB 

All farmers are invited to try the OLIVER CHILLEfLOW. 




This Plow took the first premium, both for one-horse and 
the Virginia State Fair this year, and we offer it to the farm 
North Carolina as the BEST PLOW IN USE. It can be ret 
prove so, and the money will be refunded. 

~ Our old customers are assured that the burning of ourfac 
in the slightest degree lessened our ability to fill their orders 
On the contrary we have now a larger factory, more and be 
manufacture with, and a arger and "better stock of material 
goods than we have ever had. «*m*h«u 



t\ i 

6Df 



orse plows, at 
Virginia and 
d if it does not 



facto i ist year has not 

fopods in our line. 

machinery to 

manufactured 



Address, H. M. SMIT» 
P. O. Box, 8, Richmond, Va. Man, 



CO., 



acturers. 



TO PLANTERS. 



JAS. DOWNWARD, Pres't. 



JOHN WHANN, Sec'y and Treas. 



Pohatai) Phosphate Company, 

MANUFACTURERS OF 





The above hrapd of Phosphate is used and highly recommended 
by the host wheat raisers in Virginia. It is, in every respect, a first 
class Fertilizer for wheat. A trial will convince you of this fact. 

H. D. Twyman, of Orange county, writes us that it exhibited it- 
self finely. He applied 150 pounds per acre, and made 14 bushels 

to one seedeq. 
J I 

T. W. Bond, of the same county, tells us, in a letter dated Aug. 

10, 1875, that it gave entire satisfaction on the estate of the late 

John Bond, and gave us another good order. 

J. G. Dalaney, of Green county, writes : " After a test of your 
Powhatan Raw Bone Super Phosphate for two seasons on my wheat 
crop, I feel satisfied that it is one of the best fertilizers now offered 
in the market." 

R. R. Porter, of North Carolina, writes : " The Powhatan Raw 
Bone Super Phosphate, which I bought of you last season, was the 
best fertilizer I ever had on my plantation. I used it on wheat, and, 
I think, raised double the quantity as when I used no fertilizer. I 
also used it on tobacco, and it acted like a charm." 

We also manufacture Pure BONE MEAL and BONE FLOUR, 
and will be pleased to furnish samples of any of our brands on ap- 
plication. 

oct — ly 



FERTILIZERS 

For Cotton, Tobacco, Corn, Oats and' Vegetables. 



Soluble Sea Island Guaj 

A concentrated manure of undoubted excellence for 

Cotton, Tobacco, Cereals & Vegepfp 

Ammoniated Alkaline Phosphp 

The Patron's Manure. Sold on Special Terras to Grangers. 

Drake's Branch, Ga., Aup/ 5 > 1875 - . 
Resolved, That we express to W. W. L. Raisin & Co. oi/ entire satis " 
faction at the result of the useif their Alkaline Phospha? th 9 P resenfc 
season on TobacCC, ■ / <i, If 

f W. E. McNEw/Master. 

. Bush River Grange No. 12, Sept-JT, 1875. 
Resolved, That we , express our satisfaction to R. W. L. Imisin & Co. 
as to the very favorable result of their fertilizer (Alkaline f hoSphate)> 
used by this Grange for the past Two Years. 
J. A. SHACKELTON, Sec'y- ' WM. P. DUP0Y, Master. 

■ I 



BALTIMORE AND TEXAS FERTILIZING COMPANY'S 

Pure Bone Flour and Mesjl, 

From our Extensive Texas Factories. 

Ammoniaeal Matter, 

An ammoniate superior to Peruvian Guani|. 

Potash Salts 

Dissolved Bone Phosphate, &c., &c. 

In store and for sale by 

R. W. L. RAISIN & CO. 



S. W. Cor. of South and Water Streets, 



BALTIMORE,