AGRICULTURE.

VARIOUS Opinions have been formed as to the fertility of the lands in East Florida, which common report and geographers have too uniformly pronounced to be sand hills, pine barrens, and salt marshes. Nothing but experience can confirm or remove the prejudices arising from such hasty conclusions. By some it is said, that the planters of the southern states will remove their hands, under an expectation that the lands are more calculated for the production of rice, than the Carolinas; and that they will prefer the more profitable culture of sugar, and the tropical productions, to which the peninsula is more genial, to the trouble and expense of manuring their present exhausted settlements.

The lands in these provinces, intersected in most parts by spacious rivers, creeks, lakes, and ponds, are promiscuously composed of the following kinds :

Those denominated high and low hammock, are most esteemed for the more valuable productions, such as cotton, sugar, and corn, and are distinguished by the natural growth of large evergreen oaks, hickory, red bay, magnolia, and cabbage trees; and in many parts intermixed with orange

groves, springing from a soil composed of a light, and sometimes black mixture of loam and vegetable mould, as superstrata of various depths, having a foundation of marle and clay in undulating layers, the most inexhaustible sources of cultivation. Traces of ancient settlement and population are found in these tracts of land.

Swamp lands are distinguished by the growth of the cypress and other large trees in forests, emblems of their fertility and adaptation for rice; for which cultivation, they require to be drained and devested of the saline particles unfriendly to vegetation.

Pine lands, which are more favourable to cultivation and pasturage than those in the neighbouring states, not only on account of the pine trees being more resinous, but by their distance from each other, without any underwood, giving an appearance of open groves, rather than of forests; and thereby affording room for vegetation, which is promoted by the influence of the sun and the circulation of air. Although these are too generally pronounced barren, much good corn has been raised from them, and they are said to be peculiarly adapted to the culture of the grape.

Salt marsh lands, generally bordering, with banks of oysters, on the sea coast, afford an abundance of grass, excellent food for horses and cattle. It is also good manure, on an impoverished soil, for raising cotton.

Prairie or meadow lands are margined towards the sea by immense quantities of oyster shells, from which, advancing into the country, are often found extensive plains of grass

and cane brakes, on which vast herds of cattle were formerly raised; they are also well adapted to rice and sugar.

Sand hills which run parallel with the sea, afford little more than small shrubbery, saw palmetto, wire grass, and prickly pears, without any other use than as beacons on a low coast to mariners, and as presenting a variety of romantic scenery.

Palm or Date Trees, (one of which is mentioned as growing on Anastatia or Fish's Island,) grows, in Africa, to the height of sixty, and even one hundred feet, and much resembles the cabbage trees of the country. Its branches attract notice from their beauty and constant rustling, as well as from the peculiarity of the lower branches, which resemble and serve for ladders, and seem designed by nature to ascend the tree. The fruit resembles, in form, the largest acorns, but is covered with a thin semi-transparent yellowish membrane, containing a fine soft saccharine pulp of a somewhat vinous flavour, in which is enclosed an oblong hard kernel. It affords, when fresh, a very wholesome nourishment, and possesses an agreeable taste.

An oil is prepared from the fruit of this tree called palm oil, which is much used as butter and ointment in Africa, from whence it has been transplanted into the West Indies. In Portau-Prince, the author saw a couple of them, which produced abundantly. Its fruit is said to possess emollient properties, and is frequently applied with success in cases of hæmorrhoids and chilblains. The solitary tree just referred to, bears no fruit, and confirms an opinion pretty well established, that it being

a planta divecia, is one of those in which the male and female parts of generation are upon different plants; having therefore no male plants, the flowers of the female were never impregnated with the farina of the male. "There is," says Lee, in his botanical collection from Linnæus, "a male plant of this kind, in a garden at Leipsic, from whence, in April, 1749, a branch of male flowers was procured and suspended over a female one, and the experiment succeeded so well that the palm tree produced more than one hundred perfectly ripe fruit, from which there are already eleven young palm trees. The same experiment being repeated, the tree bare above two thousand ripe fruit.

The Cinnamon Tree, or Laurus Cinnamonum, is a native of Ceylon; its trunk grows to the height of twenty feet or upwards, and, together with its numerous branches, is covered with a bark which is first green, but turns red before it arrives at perfection. The leaf is longer and narrower than the common bay tree; it does not perfect its seeds in any quantity under six or seven years, when it becomes so plentifully loaded that a single tree is almost sufficient for a colony. It seems to delight in a loose moist soil, and to require a southern aspect; the trees thus planted flourish better than those growing in loam, and not so much exposed to the sun. The seeds are a long time in coming up, and the plants make small progress for the first year or two. The birds appear to be very fond of the berries, and will probably propagate this tree in the same way they do many others. In a short time it will grow spontaneously, or without cultivation.

Calycanthus Floridus, a sweet scented shrub, or allspice;

is abundant in the middle and upper country, near low lands, along sandy bluffs; blossoms in April. It is used like the dried and powdered berries of the laurus benzoin, or spice wood, which is a tolerable substitute for allspice.

Annona, or Papaw, (Triloba) grows in rich swampy lands of the upper country; its fruit is like a banana, but thicker when ripe; is covered like the banana with a thin dark skin, containing in the inside a rich pulp, tasting like the banana or persimon; in the pulp are a few seeds like those of a per

simon.

The Olive Tree has already discovered in this country its propensity to become naturalized to it. Its value is too well known to require eulogium or comment; its fruit, in its natural state, possesses an acrid, bitter, and extremely disagreeable taste, which is considerably improved when prepared by an alkaline lessive. The most esteemed are those of Provence, being of a middling size, and preferable to those of Spain. No oil can be compared to that extracted from its fruit. The fragments of the seed fatten poultry; its branches nourish cattle, and its wood is an excellent fuel. This tree is rapidly multiplied by the sprouts that arise from its root; but it cannot bear severe frost. The tree is of a moderate size, generally straight and erect. The bark is smooth when young, but furrowed and scaly when old. The flower-bud consists of one petal; shows itself early; often in April, always in May, and blooms in the end of May and June, according to the climate. The flower rises from the bottom of the leaf, disposed in bunches upon a common peduncle or footstalk;