Burrows (the Mayor) "requests the honour of my presence," August 14th, and they have kindly made arrangements with the Cunarders to take me there and back. . . . It would be fine to set the British Association at work upon my meteorological and crop convention; but I'm too poor—I must decline. The foot took me bad the day before yesterday. Yesterday it had me on crutches, and in the agonies there came a fainting-fit, about 5 p.m. But this morning I feel better, though still on crutches.
During the last four years of his life, Maury occupied himself, as one of his professional duties at Lexington, in making a meteorological survey of his beloved Virginia, partly with the view of developing her resources, and partly in the hope of attracting immigrants to her deserted farms. This survey, as far as it had gone, he embodied in two elaborate and valuable reports; but he was not destined to see the work fully accomplished.
No man was more alive than he was to the fact that the agriculture of the South was to her an unfailing source of renewed prosperity—that, like Antæus, it was from the earth that she would gain restitution of her strength.
Hence he earnestly favoured and persistently urged all measures looking to the improvement of agriculture. To this end he resumed the series of lectures on the subject so dear to his heart, which had been interrupted by the war, and visited, by invitation, cities in Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Missouri.
In May and October 1871, he delivered the following address at St Louis, Griffin in Georgia, Norfolk, and Richmond, Nashville, which met with enthusiastic commendation:—
"I calculate, that in consequence of erroneous estimates and the lack of such accurate crop statistics as we now seek, the cotton-planters alone have received, for their last six
