Account of a small Crop of Pennsylvania Cotton. 295 

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afternoon from day to day, and when the seventh or eighth 

 leaf appeared, I made a final thinning, leaving the plants 

 at the distance of four feet from each other. A cotton 

 crop requires constant attention, but not much actual bo- 

 dily labour ; the land must be in fine order, and kept per- 

 fectly free from grass ; the ground if poor, should be 

 highly manured, and great care ought to be taken to guard 

 against caterpillars, bugs, and other insects : for this pur- 

 pose, ashes, gypsum, or a very small quantity of salt, may 

 be occasionally laid around the roots, and the loose earth 

 should be carefully drawn up to promote the growth of 

 the plants, and prevent them from suffering by too much 

 exposure to the cold winds. About the last of July my 

 Roxboro^ cotton was in blossom, and on the fifth of Sep- 

 tember, many of the pods arrived at maturity, and exhi- 

 bited to view cotton of excellent quality. I allude particu- 

 larly to the green seed cotton ; the black seed or long 

 staple had a thriving appearance, and yielded numerous 

 pods, many of them the size of a walnut, but very few of 

 them came to perfection. The long staple cotton, when 

 cultivated on the sea-Islands of South Carolina and Geor- 

 gia, is considered a most profitable crop; but does not suc- 

 ceed well beyond sixty or seventy miles from the sea 

 coast, even so far south as those States. The green 

 seed or short staple cotton can certainly be cultivated with 

 success in the vicinity of the river Delaware in Pennsyl- 

 vania, Jersey, and the State of Delaware, for domestic 

 purposes ; and in some seasons, m favourable situations, 

 it might be an object of more importance with the 

 farmer than either wheat or corn. The green seed cot- 

 ton which was planted in my orchard, with the excep- 

 tion of a very few plants, was as luxuriant and bore as 

 many fine pods, as could be met with either in the Ca- 

 rolinas or Georgia, The quarter of an acre produced 



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