The following extract from a letter of E. G. Booth, to F. C. Stainbrook, written in that plain familiar style of one friend to another, which characterises the man, with an evident intent to do good; though it was not designed for publication, we give it because we believe it will do others good, as well as the recipient. Mr. Booth confirms our opinion often expressed, that the poor old barren fields of lower Virginia, 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 after its application. I noticed a very evident effect on the farm of Mr. William Fitzgerald, a few days ago. He last year put it in drills, and hilled on them for tobacco, in the fall the whole surface was sown in wheat, which is now growing in ridges corresponding with the furrows where it was placed.