Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-03-26

Virginia, pnear numerous springs,
brooks, creeks and rivers, supply invalu-
able facilities for raising grass.l not
only to meet a vastly larger home con-
sumption, but the wants of such cities
as New York, London and Liverpool.
The District of Columbia now contains
about 10000 inhabitants, without in
Guiding the city of Alexandria or any
part of Virginia. The old Ten-miles
Square had a populationof over POO. 900.
Careful analyses made in England for
the Royal Agricultural Society show
that an acre of meadow hay formed by
irrigation or otherwise supplies potash
enough to meet the wants of two good
crops of wheat or barley. 1t would
make three heavy crops of cotton.
The things on a farm that make large
crops Of corn, wheat, cotton and tobac-
co which now run to waste into the sea,
should be more husbanded In the
South, If we desire to see our farms
worth as much per acre as they are In
the best farmed districts of Pennsyl-
wanna and New York. We have only
to use the means appointed by Infinite
Goodness to command perfect success
These means are grass seed, rain and
spring water. Every spring on the
great Sahara forms an oasis; and it is
for our Southern friends to determine
for himself, whether he will through
life devote his labor and capital to the
task of converting the planting States
into desest, implying the deep curses
of after generations, or try..to leave a
few roods of arabic land more produc-
tive than he found it. Two hundred
acres in grass on 800 acre farm will
do the needful, if properly managed.
On these 200 acres there is a vast
amount of chemical and vital energy
that cost nothing, coming from the sun,
rain, dew, and agricultural salts deep
IN the earth that rise to the surface in
springs and other running water. In
ten pounds of fine grass seed there are
millions of living germs, each having
the power to produce other millions
like itself. "All flesh is grass" yet
Southern husbandry kills grass
in the interest of flesh
The vitality, organization and nutri-
tive properties of European grass Op-
crate in thousand different ways to
fertilize the surface of the earth, by
Transforming water, air and salts into
food for all the higher order of animals,
including man. Wheat and corn are
varieties of annual grasses, and their
seeds form our daily bread. But an
nual grasses ike, millet, oats, barley
and rye are too short in life to make a
turf and fatten the soil, They con-
sumo fertility. Field culture saves
nothing. Nay, while it may enrich the
consumers of our cotton and other sta
pies at the North and in Europe, it
gives existence 10 quasi-desert, from
the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande.
Is such planting and farming to be COM
mended? 1t is agriculture run mad,
using all improved implements of till
age TO kill both grass and land at one
blow. Agricultural wealth comes from
good husbandry and sound economy in
the every day use of all the physical
and vital forces that can be brought to
focus on a large plantation, or a
small farm. To utilize only one acre
in five or tea of ones estate, is to over
tax the acres cultivated, with no ade-
quate power to make full restitution.
Hence the surface IN desolated old
fields in Virginia is from five to ten
times larger than the surface under
the pillow. How absurd IN Tennessee
ans to desire more laborers and more
capital to extend and intensity this de
structive operation!