Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/348

 had remained on the plantations abandoned, they would have been compelled to cultivate a soil more or less exhausted, and only capable of producing that commodity in profitable quantities by the application of manure. This could only have been obtained from the live stock. In spite of the greater attention which by 1637 was paid to the increase of the cattle, the manure to be gotten from them was comparatively small, as they were suffered to wander very much at large. Even if an abundant supply, however, could have been secured by penning them, the improvement of the ground by this means would not have been as satisfactory in its effect as the natural fertility of the mould of newly cleared land. It was early observed that tobacco taken from a field enriched by its conversion into a cow-pen was very rank in its flavor, which diminished the value that it would otherwise have derived from its bulkiness. The leaf grown in the bottoms along the streams was to be preferred not only in point of weight, but also in quality. It was not entirely greed of land, or even an inordinate desire to raise tobacco, that led to the rapid extension of the settlements; it was largely the necessity imposed upon the tiller of the ground to secure, in the restricted number of plants allowed him by the terms of the law, the heaviest weight which the soil under the most favorable conditions would impart to that number. In the absence of such a law, there would have been a strong disposition among the colonists to sue out patents to new land, but stimulated by the operation of such a regulation, there were but two influences likely to restrain that disposition, the expense of hewing down the forests, and the danger of attack