elds should have constant change. This system
naturally very much diversified the product of his estate, and flax, hay,
clover, buckwheat, turnips, and potatoes became large crops. The scale on
which this was done is shown by the facts that in one year he sowed
twenty-seven bushels of flaxseed and planted over three hundred bushels of
potatoes.

Early and late Washington preached to his overseers the value of
fertilization; in one case, when looking for a new overseer, he said the
man must be, "above all, Midas like, one who can convert everything he
touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards gold;--in a word
one who can bring worn out and gullied Lands into good tilth in the
shortest time." Equally emphatic was his urging of constant ploughing and
grubbing, and he even invented a deep soil plough, which he used till he
found a better one in the English Rotheran plough, which he promptly
imported, as he did all other improved farming tools and machinery of
which he could learn. To save his woodlands, and for appearance's sake, he
insisted on live fences, though he had to acknowledge that "no hedge,
alone, will, I am persuaded, do for an outer inclosure, where _two_ or
four footed hogs find it convenient to open passage." In all things he was
an experimentalist, carefully trying different kinds of tobacco and wheat,
various kinds of plants for hedges, and various kinds of manure for
fertilizers; he had tests made to see whether he could sell his wheat to
best advantage in the grain or when made into flour, and he bred from
selected horses, cattle, and sheep. "In short I shall begrudge no
reasonable expence that will contribute to the improvement and neatness of
my Farms;--for nothing pleases me better than to see them in good order,
and everything trim, handsome, and thriving about them."

The magnitude of the charge of such an estate can be better understood
when the condition of a Virginia plantation is realized. Before the
Revolution practically everything the plantation could not produce was
ordered yearly from Great Britain, and after the annual delivery
of the invoices the estate could look for little outside help. Nor did
this change rapidly after the Revolution, and during the period of
Washington's management almost everything was bought in yearly supplies.
This system compelled each plantation to be a little world unto itself;
indeed, the three hundred souls on the Mount Vernon estate went far to