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Account of a Small Crop of Pennsylvania Cotton, By 

 Philip Tidijman M. D. 



Roxboroughy July \st^ 1823. 



Read, October 21, 1823. 



Dear Sir, 



I have been prevented by a variety of unavoidable cir- 

 cumstances from acknowledging^ the receipt of your's of 

 the 19th of last month inclosing a resolution of the " Phi- 

 ladelphia Society for promoting Agriculture/' requesting 

 to be informed of the expense of raising cotton, with the 

 treatment and supposed amount of crop per acre. 



In order to give the culture of cotton in the State of 

 Pennsylvania a trial, I directed that half an acre of land 

 in a rough state in my orchard should be ploughed up 

 and harrowed ; this was accordingly done in May 1822. 

 The ground was laid out in beds, about fifty to the half 

 acre, and four feet apart from the centre of one to the 

 other ; a peck of black seed was planted in a part of the 

 ground, and in the other part consisting of little more than 

 a quarter of an acre, a peck of green seed was sown, 

 much in the same way as the common garden pea, trench- 

 ing lightly with the hoe and dropping the seed about an 

 inch apart ; the time of planting was on the 7th of May, 

 and a sufficient quantity of seed was reserved to re-plant 

 in case of frost. I returned to my residence near Ger- 

 mantown about the 26th of May, and found notwith- 

 standing the arid and sterile state of the soil, the plants 

 were growing luxuriantly, and had from two to four 

 leaves ; I suffered a week to elapse that they might ac- 

 quire a little more vigour, and then commenced thinning 

 them ; this work was resorted to for a short time in the 



