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this way for more tlian twenty years, and they are more productive now 

 than at the beginning. The general conclusion in the county is, that 

 the best results are secured from farm-manures by composting them. 

 Fairfield, S. C, reports that dissolved bone, ground and made soluble 

 with sulphuric acid, added to cotton-seed, makes a very cheap and pop- 

 ular fertilizer, which is coming into general use. The following extracts 

 from returns in Georgia, while they indicate the change for the better 

 in progress, afford hints which may be valuable to other sections : 



Harris : Very many planters are makius their own fertilizers with farm-yard manure ^ 

 top-soil, cotton-seed, and phosphates. McBuffie: Compost made by mixinc^ one ton of 

 ground bone and different acids with one and a half tons of cotton-seed and one and a 

 half tons of stable-manure, is for superior for corn or cotton to any of the commercial 

 fertilizers, and does not cost over one-third as much per ton. Bartow : A compound of 

 acid phosphate and cotton-seed has been used for the last two or three years, and the 

 use is annually increasing. It costs about !|'20 per ton of 2,000 pounds, and is equal to 

 the regular manipulated commercial manures sold at $55 to,$60 per ton. Wilkes : Com- 

 posting, by one of several formulas, as gypsum, acid, phosphates, &c., is increasing 

 every year. Camden : The cheapest plan for making manures here is by yarding cattle 

 at night in a pen well filled with alternate layers of marsh grass and marl muck — these 

 materials being plenty. With proper system one cart-load per week of " long manure " 

 to each animal can be made and Avell adapted to our sandy soil. Troup : Farmers are 

 seeing the folly of using so much of commercial fertilizers to the neglect of home-mad© 

 manure. Jefferson : Farmers are waking up to the importance of the compost-heap, 

 and it is devoutly hoped that the time is not distant when it will supersede and 

 crowd out the costly commercials which deplete the pockets of farmers in Georgia of 

 millions every year. 



Eeturns from Florida and Alabama show that these States are begin- 

 ning, and only beginning, to follow the example of Georgia in home- 

 made composts. In Mississippi and Louisiana cotton-seed is almost the 

 only fertilizer used ; even farm-yard manure is neglected ; and in Texas 

 and Arkansas both of these are extensively coupled together in the 

 returns as the only fertilizers. In the States west of the Mississippi 

 there is no composting worthy of mention. In Tennessee and West 

 Virginia, and the States further north in the Mississippi and Ohio Val- 

 leys, the practice has as yet made but little progress. 



^ GREEN-MANURiNa. — Eeturns show that the practice of plowing under 

 clover as a green manure is gaining in all sections where clover is grown 

 to any extent. That it proves one of the cheapest and most effectual 

 means of improving soils,* and at the same time one of the most valua- 

 ble fertilizers for growing crops, and especially for wheat and corn, is 

 made evident by very general returns, in which testimony, as will be 

 seen below^, is largely fortified by definite facts, as ascertained by ex- 

 periments continued for a series of years. A veiy few report that this 

 process of manuring is not practiced for the reason that some other is 

 considered more profitable ; but only two report that it is positively 

 injurious. Juniata, Pa., reports that it is " considered worse than 

 useless," and Duplin, N. 0., as follows : 



Oar farmers are averse to green -manuring with any crops, believing it a positive in- 

 jury rather than a benefit to the land. A few years since the Bear Marsh Agricultural 

 Club instituted a series of experiments with tlie cow-pea as a manurial crop, and in 

 every instance, where the peas were plowed under green, the land failed to produce as 

 good a crop as when the peas were allowed to mature and fed off on the land. In 1868, 

 a gentleman from Pennsylvania purchased a farm in this vicinity, and in September 

 turned under the growth of weeds &c. green, on part of a field of low ground, and to 

 this day the portion so treated has never produced so good a crop as the remainder of 

 the field. 



Eeturns indicate that the first crop, is turned under less frequently 

 than the second, and that less frequently than stubble. But throughout 

 the more northern States, in which hay is the most valuable productiouj. 



