rginia, are
really more valuable than the rich lands of the west; because, owing to
facilities of intercourse with commercial cities by water, these lands
can be bought, and cultivated by aid of guano, with more profit than the
richest prairie farm in Illinois. Mr. Booth's testimony upon the
durability of this manure, is enough to contradict all the assertions
that "it is of no use for only one crop." On his land, strangers can
easily tell where guano was applied four years previous.

"Yours of the third has been received, and it affords me pleasure to
give you any information in my power. The wheat crop during the the
winter was very unpromising. There was a general complaint that it was
too thin. The Poland wheat (most generally sown in this neighborhood,)
is said to branch more than other kinds, and I regard the present
prospect of the wheat crop as flattering, particularly where guano was
used. It is now a fixed fact, that no poor land ought to be cultivated
without guano, by any person who can command the money or credit to buy
it. It is remarkable that it pays a much better profit, or per cent. on
the investment, on poor land, than rich. I was inclined for some time to
believe that the difference was really in appearance alone. The
difference of five bushels increase on land which without it would bring
only fifteen--or in other words, an increase from fifteen to twenty
bushels to the acre, would not be very perceptible, while an increase of
five bushels on land previously making only five, would be very evident.
Still, the real increase would be five bushels in each case. I am now
however, decidedly of the opinion that it pays a much larger per cent.
on poor than rich land; because it supplies that in which poor land is
deficient, and of which rich land may have enough. I have it now in
strips on a clover fallow, scarcely showing any difference. I last
applied it on about the poorest land on my plantation, and the product
was remarkable. This circumstance much reduces the difference between
the value of poor and rich land, and admonishes us that there is not a
plot in our wide extended surface, which need be abandoned or neglected.
We can, if we manage properly, support a population which will out vote
the West in 1865. There is another fact which experience confirms, that
is it is much more durable than at first supposed. My visitors have been
able to point out the strips of land on which it was sown, four years