CHAPTER VIII. 



SPECIAL CROPS AND ROTATION OF CROPS. 



^/^fOTTO^, though, no longer King, is a most important 

 ^ ' "li crop. As corn furnishes cheap food, so cotton furnishes 



cheap clothing. It is a child of the sun and flourishes 

 only where it can have seven or eight months secure 

 from frost, and be nearly free from rains for three or four months. 

 Three classes of soils are suited to cotton. Soft or rotten lime- 

 stone soils; the black soils of the Texas prairies, and the 

 Alabama canebrakes ; and, best of all, the river bottoms or 

 alluvions. The cotton region proper in this country is within 

 the limits of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, the northern 

 part of Florida, Mississippi, the northern half of Loui.-iana, the 

 southern half of Arkansas, and the eastern half of Texas; but 

 wdthin these limits, with improved modes of culture, might be 

 raised the cotton of the world. 



There are other small portions of the South where cotton can 

 be grown, but not in profitable quantities, except at a high 

 price — twelve to sixteen cents per pound. Not more than one 

 half the cultivatable land of a plantation should in any case be 

 planted in cotton. The remainder should be devoted to corn, 

 roots, pasture and woodland. Perhaps a still better division is 

 one third in cotton, one third in some green crop to be plowed 

 under, and one third in grain, grass, and roots. Every culti- 

 vated acre will thus have a chance to recuperate itself once in 



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