and harrows that; in some cases has sown clover,
and in others, followed wheat after wheat with increasing productiveness
every year; clearly proving the effect of one application, to be
beneficial to the succeeding crop. Without guano, or very high manuring,
wheat will deteriorate year after year, if sown upon the same soil,
until the product would not pay for the labor of sowing and harvesting.

Upon one upland field, which without manure would not pay for
cultivation, he sowed one bushel of wheat and 200 lbs. Peruvian guano
and made fifteen bushels. Plowed down the stubble with same application,
and when we saw the crop, should have been willing to insure it at
twenty-five bushels. Col. C. has nearly 2,000 acres in cultivation,
which within his recollection was cultivated entirely with hoes--his
grandfather would not use a plow--was as much set against that great
land improver as some modern, but no more wise farmers, are against
guano. Col. C. uses the best of plows; sows 200 lbs. guano to the acre
and plows it in six inches deep, and sows one bushel of wheat and
harrows thoroughly, but not deep enough to disturb the guano. His gain
has been eight bushels average upon 210 lbs. guano. Thinks Peruvian at
$50 a ton preferable to any other at current prices. His land is mostly
clayey loam and was so much exhausted by a hundred years hard usage, it
was barely able to support the servants, until the Colonel commenced his
system of improvements by draining, deep plowing, rotation of crops,
lime, plaster, clover, and guano; the latter of which he looks upon as
the salvation of lower Virginia; while his large sales of eight or ten
hundred acres of corn and wheat, sufficiently attest its value upon that
location. His actual annual profits upon the use of guano, cannot be
less than two thousand dollars.

Doctor Brockenborough, Doctor Gordon, Messrs. Dobyn, Micou, Garnett and
others of Tappahannock and vicinity, have all found the application even
upon the bottom lands, profitable, though not to so great an extent as
upon the poor old field-pine lands of Mr. Newton; but simply from the
reason that his land was utterly worthless before, but after the
application of the guano, was increased in value more than its whole
cost, besides the profit derived from the crop.

Wm. D. Nelson, a neighbor of Mr. Newton, bought a tract of land for a
residence, at $4 an acre, which in its natural condition was not worth
cultivating; but with