- tible of regeneration by good management. The soil is
deep and of a brown loamy sand, which sparkles like silver ore, or with what the Doctor calls mica. It is so deeply bedded or rooted with sharp sedgy grass, that a yoke of six oxen seems necessary for heaving it the first and second time. He determines on sowing it, when fit, with grass-*seeds, tares, turnips, and other green crops, but no corn or grain, until he can double the quantity per acre grown by his neighbours. The former proprietor was always unable to support himself and his negroes on this estate; and once, in a half-starved plight, went for food to his neighbour, Mr. Simpson, who supplied him with corn-*meal. Farms and Farming in Maryland and Virginia.
Ten bushels an acre were here deemed a living profit by some farmers. "For ten years," says Mr. Cocker, "they resisted plaster of Paris and good management, as an innovation by which they conceived the land would be spoiled. At last they were convinced by starvation, and by seeing, {133} under a better system, 20 or 30 bushels an acre, where once they raised only seven, eight, or ten, without plaster. Mr. Worsley, an English farmer from Lincolnshire, now a first-rate manager in Virginia, has in about 15 years gained 5,000l. by farming, although he began with only 500l. He says he has not introduced the English system, because it is not suited to the climate, which, at best, is unfavourable to agriculture, as instanced in washing rains and forcing heats. The former expose the roots of grain and rob them of the soil; and the latter draw the plants fast, and make them, particularly if thickly sown, very weak and long, before harvest. It is in consequence laid flat on the surface, and the produce
