400 
on the 17th of September, and are as thick as they ever were here, 
destroying everything as they go. Uvalde: Appeared September 22 
in quantities, arriving from the north, and causing some alarm. McLen- 
nan: Reached here on the 20th of September, and have materially dam- 
aged the cotton crop by cutting off unripe bolis. Bell: Made their 
appearance in great numbers about a week since, and are destroying 
all gardens and every sward of grain. They have cut off the late corn 
and the young bolls on the late cotton. Dallas: Have cut short the 
cotton crop. Gillespie: The first grasshoppers arrived on the 18th of 
September. Three days later they left, going west, being driven by an 
east wind. 
LABoR.—South Carolina, Colleton: Labor is plenty and excellent. 
There is no trouble in getting it if one is willing to pay for it. A plenty 
of good farm-hands can be had at 50 cents per day, without board. 
Florida.—Gadsden : The necessities of the freedmen, which have been 
extremely stringent this year, brought out the women and half-grown 
boys and girls, and consequently there has been no lack of pickers. 
Jefferson : Labor is good, and not much diverted by politics from gath- 
ering Crops. 
Mississippi.—Monroe: Labor is working well, and if the weather con- 
tinues favorable we will have no cotton in the fields by the 1st of No- 
vember. La Fayette: The labor is not quite so much demoralized by the 
electioneering as we had feared. 
INJURIES FROM DROUGHT.—Pennsylvania.—Northampton: I am safe 
in saying, not only that the great drought has destroyed the potatoes, 
grass, and corn, but the great heat ripened our wheat in a few days, so 
that fully one-third of the crop was lost in gathering by being shelled 
out and left upon the field. In nine-tenths of the county, the young 
clover and timothy, which had a good start in the spring, have been 
killed outright, making an unpromising prospect for a hay-crop next 
year. Many pieces of young clover and timothy look like open fal- 
low. Such heat and drought have not been known previously within 
the memory of the oldest inhabitant. This has been, upon the whole, 
the worst season for farmers in the county since its organization, over 
ene hundred years ago. 
A NEW PROCESS OF UTILIZING COTTON. 
By THE COMMISSIONER. 
Any process which will facilitate and cheapen the manufacture of 
cotton possesses an interest which must command the attention of the 
people of this country, where alone this fiber is most successfully pro- 
duced. The invention of the cotton-gin was a prodigious step forward 
to promote the increased production and profitable employment of the 
cotton-planter; and now the ingenious mechanic proposes another step 
forward in aid of this all-important industry, by ‘a new process for con- 
verting seed-cotton directly into yarns;” whereby the use of the “gin” 
will be entirely superseded, and each step of converting the cotton, as 
it comes from the field, greatly cheapened. We take this mode of call- 
ing public attention to the subject, and to invite a strict scrutiny into 
the merits of the proposed improvement. 
