CAULirLOWER IN THE SOUTH. 87 



preparation of the soil. This process should be 

 begun shortly after the rains, when the soil is easily 

 plowed or dug. It should then be turned up 

 roughly to a depth of a foot or fifteen inches. A 

 month later the clods should be broken with the 

 mallet or clod crusher, and the plow put through 

 the ground a second time. When the soil has 

 weathered a few weeks, the scarifier or cultivator 

 should be run over it once monthly until May. At 

 that time good decayed cow dung or poudrette 

 should be spread one inch deep, and any close 

 growing crop which is not valuable, such as sunn, 

 tag, chanamoo, or Crotolaria juncea, should be 

 sown to keep down weeds and encourage the forma- 

 tion of nitric acid in the soil, which has been proved 

 to be effected to a greater extent under a crop than 

 on bare soil. During dry weather in August the 

 crop should be pulled up and the ground plowed 

 or dug and the crop l^uried in the trenches to act 

 as green manure, and the land prepared for irriga- 

 tion. 



The seed- bed should be prepared by thorough 

 digging and mixing about an inch in depth of old 

 manure ; wood ashes and decayed sweepings having 

 a quantity of goat or sheep dung in it is well 

 suited for the seed-bed at this season. Cow dung 

 is apt to have the larva of the dung beetle in it — a 

 very large caterpillar which destroys young plants 



