Lynchburg Virginian. [volume] (Lynchburg [Va.]) 1829-185?, 1851-05-19

sion Of agricultural science among tho mass
or farmers. h language i to them n N
knows tongue. Hence the most sublims
truths in the economy Of nature are shus
out from the popular understanding. Itis
feared that tins win ever BE- the case until
schools. designed to teach those branches
of learning which the practical farmer
greatly naeds, but does not possess, are es-
tablishcd and maintained throughout the
United States. So long as we refuse to
plant the seed, it is folly to expect q rich
harvest OF knowledge.
We ovcr-cstimatethe value Of mere physi.
cal strength, like that Of the OK or mule,
and underestimate the intrinsic worth OF
cultivated, well-developcd reason, in prac-
teal agriculture. No inconsiderable de-
gree of mental culture must precede al
scientific tillage and husbandry. An oak
is not matured from an acorn in day, nor
in a year nor Is it possible to form, in a
single generation. universally educated
and highly improved race Of. men. Such
improvements, to be general and fixed in a
people. as distinguishing feature in their
character, must be deeply impressed on
several successive generations.
As class, farmers have few advantages
for being well informed in the rapid pro
gress now making in the economical i'm
provement of soils, cultivated plants, and
domestic animals. This lack ofopportuni-
| ty is serious misfortune, and leads to this
practical result With FIVE million farm
laborers-two million seven hundred thou
sand in the slaye-holding, and two million
three hundred thousand in the free States
American agriculturists SO misdirect
this immense power of production,that the
injury done to one hundred million acres OF
land is nearly equal to all the apparent
net profits on the whole rural industry Of
the country.
To illustrate an important fact as well
as principle, let us suppose farmer
produces crops worth one thousand dol
lars, and they cost him, including all OK
penses for labor, wear of implements, in
tercst on capital, &C., eight hundred and
fifty dollars. Nominally, he has profit OF
one hundred and fifty dollars. But it often
happens that, ifhe should undertake to re-
place in his cultivated fields as much Of
potash, soda, magnesia, phosphorus, soluble
silica and other clements of crops, as both
tillage and cropping had removed, it would
cost him one hundred and scventy-fve OF
two hundred dollars to effect that purpose
1t is only by consuming Me natural ferI
ity Of tic land that he has realized any
profit.
In national point of view, all labor thai
impoverishes the soil is worse than thrown
away. No fact in the science of politica
economy is more important than this. To
reduce field, which in its virgin state pro-
duced forty bushels of corn per acre.dowr
to twenty, in ten years, and then cultivate
it for forty years and harvest only twenty
bushels per acre, in place Of forty, is cqual
to loss Of four hundred bushels of corr
per acre, or onc-half the diminished pro-
duct, without any equivalent whatever
Thus to impovcrish land is to wither the
muscles of both man and beast employed
in its tillage.
Human toll is often praised for being
highly productive, when, had the whole
truth been known, it would have beer
seen to be remarkably destructire. Labor
never creates a particle Of new matter by
ploughing deep or shallow; but it fire.
quently places the elements of grain, cot
ton, and provisions beyond the reach of Ill
scientific farmers who may live hereafter
and find the soil wanting in the raw ma
tcrial for making human food and raiment.