141 



freedmen are buying farms; but few will sell to them. Three of them 

 who i)urchased five hundred and eighty acres of good alluvial land, paid 

 one-third the price out of their year's earnings. 



IMPROVED CULTURE IN ARKANSAS. 



Independe7ice County, Arkansas. — There have been but five secular days 

 since the 1st of February which were too wet or cold for plowing, and 

 the result is that all farming work is one month more forward in this 

 county than in the spring of 1S09. Three-fourths of the corn and cot- 

 ton ground is broken up, laid oft", and in readiness for planting ; and it 

 is due to our people to say that their grounds never were prepared so 

 thoroughly and with so much skill as is everywhere apparent in this 

 county, iu the i^reparation for the crop of 1870. 



IMPROVED CULTURE IN MISSISSIPPI. 



Amite County, Mhsisslppi. — As a general remark, I feel authorized to 

 say, that there is quite a disposition among the people of this county to 

 improve their stock of every kind, and the improvement in agricultural 

 pursuits, the introduction of new and improved implements of hus- 

 bandry, and the application of manures and fertilizers, the raising of 

 grasses, and the improvement iu various kinds of seeds for field crops, 

 clearly indicate au advance in the various departments of agriculture. 



COTTON AND CORN IN SUNFLOWER COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI. 



Sunflower County, Mississq)pi. — This is a cotton country — cotton and 

 corn. We grow from thirty to forty bushels au acre, on an average, of 

 corn, and make the best of cotton iu as great abundance as any part of 

 the continent, or indeed of the world. For though the Brazos and Eed 

 River lauds occasionally make a hit and raise more cotton, our crops are 

 far more certain than theirs. Little more than half the open land is 

 worked. Much of the finest alluvial land lies now uncultivated. This 

 is the country for poor immigrants — men with nothing but their sinews. 

 They are furnished here with everything to make crops, and then those 

 crops are equally divided with them. Any good hand here can make a 

 thousand dollars, worth of cotton and four hundred bushels of corn. I 

 knew one who in 1866 cleared $1,600 with a crop he made and culti- 

 vated. He had no rent to pay, however. 



DIVERSITY OF CROPS. 



Macon County, Georgia. — The Department is working in the right di- 

 rection iu endeavoring to impress upon our people (of the South) the 

 necessity of a more varied agriculture. ]^ine- tenths of the flour eaten 

 in this county is raised elsewhere; one-third of the corn and nearly all 

 the hay also. There is hardly a land-owner in this county who raises sufd- 

 cient meat to furnish his labor. We are making some little effort to in- 

 duce the freedmen to raise their own meat. They are our largest meat 

 consumers, and if they could be induced to raise their own provisions, 

 it would, to a great degree, put a stoj) to the exit of the enormous 

 amounts of money yearly sent out of our county for i^rovisions. 



DAMAGE TO CROPS FROM STOCK RUNNING AT LARGE. 



Camden County, Georgia. — An estimate was made in the fall of the cost 

 of three small pigs. They destroyed the planting of over two acres of 



