594 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



With stable manure, as with every other commodity, the demand 

 jjoverus the price. When I commenced truck farming, in 1850, it could 

 be had at some of the public stables for the hauling. Two years after- 

 wards I paid $100 by the year for all the manure from the largest livcjy 

 stable. At present it costs at the stables in Savaunah 25 ceuts jut 

 dump-cart load and 50 cents for a tvro-horse load, thrown in witlniut 

 packing, or it is contracted for by the year at the rate of 40 cents per 

 wagon-load. 



At Norfolk, where so much is required, recourse must be had to dis 

 I ant ])oints, and it is brought in schooners from New York, Baltinion ', 

 iiiid Washington, costing by the cargo sometimes $1.50 per load of L'i) 

 bushels. A bushel of green manure, as it comes with tlie straw, ^\:«:., 

 from the stable, weighs about 23 or 30 ]iOuuds. Delivered at Norfolk, a 

 toil would, therefore, cost about $5. The Norfolk truck farmers, how- 

 ever, use large quantities of the best Peruvian guano. 



According to ligures given in the appendix to Harris's Talks on Mn- 

 nures, to which valuable work I am indebted for several of these data, 

 the price of stable manure in Philadelphia is $9 to $10 by retail, or $7 to 

 $8 by annual contract for four-horse wagon-loads of 2.} to 3i tons. At 

 this rate the highest price is $4 per ton. hi New York City the aver- 

 age cost is $3 per horse, nnd it is delivered on cars or vessel at 80 cents 

 per tub of 14 bushels. Mr. Peter Henderson' says, if stable manure can 

 be laid on the ground at $3 per ton, it is cheaper than commercial ferti- 

 lizers of any kind at their usual rates. These comparisons of the cost 

 of stable manure at various chief points of market-gardening show, not 

 only that the truck farmers of Norfolk probably' iray a higher rate for 

 it than any tillers of the soil in the United States, but also how indis- 

 pensable to success it is there considered. 



COTTON SEED. 



As the most indispensable requirement for the commencement of civil- 

 ization of a people has been a fertile soil, it ought to follow that a 

 people possessing, in a product of agriculture — from a source, therefore, 

 inexhaustible — the most valuable fertilizing material, should be ca[>able 

 of the greatest i)rogress. It is well said, "the more manure the more' 

 crop," but tonocountry can the reverse of the saying, " the morecrop the 

 more manure," be applied with as much force as to these United States 

 of America. No crop is less exhaustive of the fertility of the soil than 

 cotton, and none yields, as a secondary product, a material so valuable 

 and so rich in all the eiements of plant-food as cotton seed. It natu- 

 rally follows, however, that as these valuable elements contained in 

 this estimable product must have been derived from the soil, it devolves 

 upon every patriotic, intelligent, and economic Southern farmer to see 

 to it tliat they be returned to it in order to prevent the exhaustion of 

 its fertility. Chemists have demonstrated by analyses, and farnici-s 

 have corroborated the fact, that it is the most concentrated food lor 

 stock known, and after having been fed to animals, that the maiuuc is 

 richer in fertilizing matter than that resulting from any other food. 



