The native Virginian. [volume] (Orange Court House, Va.) 1867-187?, 1868-01-10

LEARN TO IRRIGATE LAND.

Irrigation is capable of doing more
for the improfetient of Southern agri
culture than any other operation, what
ever, of no greater cost. Spring water
brings tertilizing substances up from
the deep earth, and conveys them along
all water courses whose bottoms are
made more productive than uplands, i'll
the sathe fieisfborhood. This Increase
of fertility is due mainly to two causes:
1st, to the abiding affinity of common
clay for ammonia and all agricultural
salts, by which it extracts them from
all moving water in which they may
exist. I'd, to the fact that all spring,
creek and river water abounds in fer
tilizing matter-rartly in solution :and
partly in suspension, as solid particles
of vegetable and animal mold, clay and
sand. Water itself supplies over 40
per cent of the elements of all plants
exclusive of their earthly part, and gen
orally contains no inconsiderable a
mount of carbonic acid. Viewed in the
light of these facts, it is easy to under
stand how natural it is for Irrigated
river bottoms to be both rich and inca
pable of exhaustion. drumming water
makes full restitution and compensa-
tion for all atoms removed i'll. crops or
by tillage and therefore, all should ir-
rigate as large surface on their farms
as possible, as d home source of manure.
Remunerating crops made by irrigs-
tion, will give one funds to pay for any
good commercial fertilizer u farmer or
planter may choose to purchase. The
writer has Irrigated pastures and niea-
dows wliich furnish much grass at 4
cost too small to be fully or correctly
estimated. This grass Supports dairy
COWS, young cattle, colts and mules,
and is substantially, a living fountain
of manure for making grain on upland.
The expense of turning springs and
branch water Over fields, is small in-
deed. A few bitches and cutters suffice
to distribute water over several acres,
while the deposit of mud tends to fillup
all hollows and tit the ground for NOV
ing and the better distribution of water
hereafter. For instance, on an une-
ven surface, muddy water may be 30
inches deep in one place; and 3 inches
in another. BY stopping the current,
ten times more mud will fall in the 80
inches of water than in the 8 inches, so
that at length the low and high places
in meadow or pasture, will have a
common level.
Irrigating water has still other ad-
vantages, such as spreading fine clay
and mold over poor sand or gravel
surface. Some soils are so loose and
porous that common manures are near
-ly thrown away when applied to them.
Cover them with muddy water, and
you fill these pores with fine earth, rich
in plant food, like the bottom of a
drained mill pond, In a word, the
more l see of irrigation, the better 1
like it. On the French Broad river
near me, one freshet has deposited mud
four feet deep in plaees--too deep for
cultivation this year. But oceans of
corn are approaching maturity on bot
toms irrigated by nature, in Tennes-
see.
Let art and industry initiate her ex-
ample, and extend the fruitfulness of
made land along streams, over plains
and the sides of hillssand .niountains.-
Correspondence Of the Southern Cultiuator.