CHAPTER XVI. 



FERTILIZING. 



fHIS has never been sufficiently appreciated in the 

 South. Her broad acres have always tempted 

 to planting too much land and using too little ma- 

 nure. Somehow, when Northern men come South 

 they, too, yield to the temptation and fall into the 

 Southern fashion. And yet no soil responds more 

 readily to the influence of manure than our warm 

 Southern soil. The manure put by Peter Hender- 

 son on a single acre would be deemed by any 

 Southern farmer ample for the broad fields of cot- 

 ton stretching around his decaying mansion. A 

 few men are wiser ; they have ceased to fell the 

 forest for more land, and are contracting the planted 

 area of the old land. They are endeavoring to in- 

 crease their crops by manuring. Such men have 

 succeeded, and are still succeeding. Some I know 

 have grown rich by such a policy. 



No crop feeds more ravenously than the orange, 

 and none will convert so large an amount of suitable 

 fertilizers into fruit so profitably. Much of our 

 Florida land will produce and sustain fine trees for 

 a few years without the aid of manure ; but after 

 some years of fruiting the leaves will begin to turn 



