460 



The top crop has matured well, producing less short and discolored 

 fiber than usual. The report of Taylor County, Georgia, claims a more 

 favorable autumn for maturing and gathering than for twenty years, 

 and a crop larger by a third than was promised late in September. 

 Counties in Alabama, rated short on the 1st of October, will secure a 

 full average. Many of the returns, made early in November, claimed 

 entire exemption from frosts to date. The influence of mild and pleas- 

 ant weather in Tennessee upon the maturing of later bolls is especially 

 marked, and perhaps in a still higher degree in Missouri. 



Large yields are occasionally reported, as in Crawford County, Texas,, 

 where 3,000 jjounds of seed cotton per acre have been grown upon 

 limited areas. In Uvalde County, in the same State, 800 pounds are 

 assumed to be the average for the first year of cotton culture there.. 

 In some portions of North Carolina, as in Stokes County, good farmers- 

 are realizing a bale per acre, and in many counties a better yield is 

 secured than in 1859. Several counties in other States report the 

 largest crop ever grown. 



On the contrary, there are counties in wiiicli a reduction aj^pears, as^ 

 in Bertie, North Carolina, where the crop " is scarcely larger than last 

 year with twice the acreage." 



It is mentioned, as a noticeable fact, that the advantages of favorable 

 weather were in many places rendered nugatory by poor cultivation ; 

 and abundant evidence appears that watchfulness and industry, with 

 science, will go far to obviate any disadvantages, natural or otherwise^ 

 under which the planter may labor. An illustration is atibrded from 

 Wilkinson County, Mississippi, a comparatively poor portion of the 

 State, where our own correspondent has produced fully 500 pounds of 

 lint per acre, on old hill lands, by means of deep, thorough culture, 

 stable manure, and commercial fertilizers. 



A general exemption from losses by insects is noted, with occasional 

 exceptions, mostly in Louisiana and Texas. The counties of Red Itiver, 

 Matagorda, and Henderson, in Texas, and Eutherford County, in Ten- 

 nessee, have been infested with the boll-worm. 



Floods have reduced the yield in Kendall, Milam, Victoria, Fayette, 

 Colorado, Bexar, and other counties in Texas. 



liust has been injurious in the counties of Anson and Rowan, North 

 Carolina, and to a slight extent in Mississippi and Louisiana. 



A peculiarity of the season has been the appearance of cotton blooms 

 late in the fall, indicating an autumn unusually favorable to the vigor 

 and continued fruitlulness of the plant. Second crops of grapes and 

 other fruits have also been noted in the South from a similar cause. 



The sea-island cotton culture has not been extended, and has been 

 less prosperous than the upland varieties, which constitute nearly the 

 wiiole bulk of our production. The sea islands are now mainly occu- 

 pied by freedmen, who are not iirogressive, and scarcely industrious 

 enough in the work. The cotton of Glynn County, Georgia, is grown 

 almost exclusively by freedmen, who rent the lands, and, never manur- 

 ing, the soil is exhausted and the crop a failure. A few islands of the 

 Carolina and Georgia coast and a part of the cotton acreage of Florida, 

 constitute our available resources in black seed cotton. Last year's 

 crop was but 2(),()5G bales. 



The region of Galveston Bay, in Texas, produces sea-island cotton of 

 superior quality. A report is received of a sack of 118 pounds of lint, 

 which was sold last season in Galveston for $123. The yield is repre- 

 sented to be 2U0 to 300 pounds per acre. 



It will of course be understood that these aggregates are estimates, 



