462 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
lapping in the rows. The thorough preparation of the land before plow- 
ing made the labor of cultivating the crops comparatively light. The 
five acres produced 12,510 pounds of cotton, averaging 2,502 pounds per 
acre. Cost of manure: Guano, $44; plaster, $14; ashes, $4; stable 
manure, $20; total, $82; averaging $16 40 per acre. 
. Mr, Crawford also reports that in March, 1869, on a field of one acre, 
he applied broadcast and plowed under eighty loads of manure, costing 
$20, and planted Boyd’s Prolific seed, the land being of the same nature 
as that of the five acres above mentioned, and cultivated in the same 
manner. This acre produced 3,960 pounds of cotton. The excess of 
production on this one acre over the average of the five-acre field was 
1,458 pounds; the excess of cost of manure applied, only $3 60 per 
acre. 
Mr. M. C. M. Hammond, of Beach Island, South Carolina, reports an 
experiment made in 1869 with fertilizers on cotton on a gray soil, thin 
from long tillage, underlaid by a red clay subsoil. The ground was 
opened March 29, with a shovel plow running five or six inches deep, 
at intervals of three feet, in rows north and south, and the fertilizers 
were equally distributed in the furrow, at the rate of 307 pounds per 
acre, and bedded over with a Brinley plow. April 19 the beds were 
opened with a small bull-tongue, and the seed dropped, eight or ten 
together, at distances of fifteen inches apart, and covered with a board, 
a fine rain following at night. The cultivation was done with sweep 
and hoe, each used three times, the first working being on May 12, the 
last, July 30. The spring was cold, and unfavorable to growth. Heavy 
rain storms occurred June 1 and July 27; the interval between the 
two being, in general, one of intense heat; there was a similar heated 
term in August. The stand was defective. The following are the fer- 
tilizers applied, with their respective products of seed cotton per acre: 
Dickson Compound, product, 1,258 pounds; J. T. Gardiner’s Manipu- 
lated, 1,278 pounds; Patapsco, 1,058 pounds; Baugh’s Raw-bone, 1,012 
pounds; Peruvian guano, 999 pounds; Wilcox & Gibbs’s Manipulated, 
988 pounds; “J ,’ 676 pounds; no fertilizer, 481 pounds. The 
small product of the latter shows the great exhaustion of the soil on 
which the experiment was tried. 
Mr. J. W. Roberts, of Osyka, Mississippi, reports to the Department an 
experiment made this year in fertilizing cotton on about 14 acre of poor 
upland, not capable of producing without manure more than 500 pounds 
of seed cotton. The ground was plowed to a good depth, and was 
otherwise well prepared; was manured with 370 pounds of Pierce’s 
superphosphate of lime, and planted with ‘“ Dickson” seed. The 
crop of seed cotton amounted to 1,300 pounds, making 433 pounds of 
baled cotton, which, after paying all expenses, gave a net profit of 
$49 52. According to this exhibit, the fertilizer should be credited with 
an increase of, at least, 800 pounds of seed cotton, on the area named. 
Cotton on drained land.i—A “young planter” at Eatonton, Georgia, 
states his experience with a half acre of land which he under-drained in 
the fail of 1868, and which before that had been wet in the driest 
seasons. He accomplished the drainage by digging a ditch four feet 
deep and three teet wide, across which he placed poles, six feet apart, 
sunk in the earth to within six inches of the bottom of the diteh, 
crossing these with other poles, then overlaying with brush and 
filling up with earth. Before March of the next year the land was dry 
enough to be plowed. Ue then broke it up, opened rows about seven 
feet apart, and applied Dickson’s Compound at the rate of 300 pounds 
to theacre; planted early, and gathered from the half acre 1,500 pounds 
——— ee a 
