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eratiou of the subject. While much comment is made upon the effect pro- 

 duced by the great change in the character of hibor, and the want of con- 

 trol over it, which the planter has once bad, a compendium of the whole 

 correspondence leads to the inevitable conclusion that botli cotton and 

 sugar have diminished in the quantity of production, but that neither 

 has depreciated to any extent in quality, and the cause of failure is most 

 unerringly traceable to the planter himself. 



If this Department can impress upon the planters of cotton and 

 sugar the indispensable importance of selecting seed and careful culti- 

 vation, it will have accomplished the introduction of a rcmedv which 

 will cure the evil. What are the " Dickson," the " Boyd," the " Peeler," 

 the "Hnrlong," but the productions of selection 1 Does not all nature 

 teach that in her operations "like produces like?" A letter in pos- 

 session of the Department from an individual at Montezuma, Georgia, 

 gives most satisfactory assurance that he has increased his crop of cotton 

 20 per cent, by the continued pursuit of selection for a few j'cars ; and 

 all the testimony everywhere coincides with this experience. 



In the preparation of cotton-seed, what is the practice now, and what 

 should it be ? The seed is promiscuously taken from the gin, carelessly 

 thrown upon aheap, where it remains until i)lanting-time, and without 

 regard to any selection of good or indifferent is again committed to the 

 earth to make its bad or indifferent product. Is this practice adopted 

 to avoid the labor of selection, or is it really traceable to a want of faith 

 in the superior value which good seed has over that which is indiffer- 

 ent; or is it a commingled feeling of doubt and slothful ness, with a want 

 of that degree of energy, without which planting should be the work 

 of other hands? 



A few figures may serve to convince, when mere reasoning may fail. 

 The vigorous plants which first mature are always best for selection. 

 One hand will gather in a day 150 i)ounds of cotton which will produce 

 108 pounds of seeds, and this will plant two acres of ground ; so that it 

 will require 25 days' work to secure the selected seed for fifty acres. 

 Allowing nothing for the cotton picked, this selection will cost, at 

 $1 a day to each hand employed, $25. Assuming the loroduct without 

 the selection of seed to be at the rate of half a bale an acre, the amount 

 would be 25 bales of, say, 450 pounds each, being 11,250 pounds, esti- 

 mated to be worth at home 15 cents a pound, or $1,087.50. Now, the 

 evidence is incontrovertible that a careful selection of seed will increase 

 this product 20 per cent., or an amount of $337.50, from which deduct 

 the $25 paid for selecting, and there is a clear gain of $312.50 upon a 

 single crop of 50 acres. When it is remembered how seed is usually 

 taken from the gin, and how it is stored away for future use, and the 

 process of degeneracy occasioned by heating, it is not at all wonderful 

 that the estimate of the increased yield from pure, selected seed should 

 be 20 j)er cent. Indifferent seed produces an infirm and sickly plant, 

 and a consequent diminution of cotton. Practice sanctions the use of 

 from two to eight bushels of seed to plant an acre of ground, and the 

 I)lanter consoles himself with the idea that it is not lost ; but this is 

 only i)artially true, for this wasteful mode of converting- seed into ma- 

 nure is not justified by the benefits derived. It would be far more 

 prolitable to subject the seed, as it accumulates at the gin, to an appli- 

 cation of plaster of Paris, and muck from a swamp, or pine shucks or 

 leaves and earth from the woods, and thus convert the refuse cotton- 

 seeds into a compost which will tell with tenfold the effect upon the 

 crop of cotton to which it is aj^plied. One bushel of well and carefully 

 selected seed will be quite sufficient to plant an acre of grouud in hills, 



