THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



347 



the rate of 2S tons per acre, to aH'ord a trial of 

 the value of the urine. They came up with a 

 most beautiliji unilorniity alier the urine, not 

 one inch of the tiriil weaklier than another ; that 

 alter the clung was in lul'ts, arising Ironi the ditli- 

 culiy ol" each part gelling a iair proportion in 

 quantity and quality ol' dung in the beginning ol 

 December. 'I'he day beiore the show equal por- 

 tions were taken up, and weighed, but there was 

 ijo dilierence in weijihi, which was at the rate ol 

 36 ions per acre. Those Ircni the uiine were more 

 unilonn in size than those Ironi the dung; which 

 characteristic they had kept liom ihe time ol their 

 coming up to their gathering. 



The result ot the irial justifies an opinion, al- 

 ready emertained by the writer of this, ihat the 

 urine has not as a manure been held in that esti- 

 mation that it ought to have been. When cattle 

 are much on green Ibod, it Ibrms one-lburth oTthe 

 whole manure, as in the case above cited, where 

 it was equal lo this poriion ; the dung otherwise 

 being 7 tons. From the lact ascertamed by the 

 above experiment, thai its ellects are not destroy- 

 ed by eariy application, it can be laid regularly 

 on as made ; or should the field on which it is to 

 be laid not be ready it can be stored tiy having 

 it absorbed in dry earth, and then carted lo tlie 

 field. 



REMARKS ON THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF 

 THE EASTERN SHORiU OF MARYLAND. 



To tlie Editor of tlie Farmers' Register. 



I see, by a late communication to the Register, 

 thai a bank of accessible marl has recently been 

 lound in Somerset county. When Prolessor Du- 

 caiel made his geological tour ol" the Eastern 

 Shore, he came to some hasty conclusions ; and 

 among others, ihat there was no accessible marl 

 in Dorcesler, Somerset and Worcester counties. 

 The true slate of ihe case was, none had been 

 lound; ind I susject but little search has been 

 made. What dues not appear, does not exist, is 

 a sound legal niaxmi, but very erroneous in geo- 

 logy. 1 have no knowledge of marl here rising 

 to the surface of the earih. Most of the man 

 beds have been discovered by accident ; and 

 a gentleman of my neighborhood, a few days 

 since, showed me a specimen of rich shell marl, 

 which had been washed out of a bank on his es- 

 tate by the late heavy rains. 



The geological discoveries of Prolessor Duca- 

 tel have been ol small value, but to him I impute 

 no blame. When h.s office was established, Ma- 

 ryland was about to plunge deeply in the system 

 of internal improvements, and perhaps the pro- 

 jectors thought a geologist a means of rendering 

 their system popular, by amusing the natives. 

 The legislature provided no means lor prosecuting 

 works of discovery, and all that ihe geologists 

 could do, (I speak of our ov/ii shore,) was to ride 

 from county to county, and collect by information 

 materials lor an annual report lo the legislature. 

 The state ol New Yoik is now engaged in exa- 

 mining her territories, by digging and boring. 

 Steel, iron, emery, marble and other valuable 

 fossils have been discovered. If ihe legislature 

 had placed at the disposal of the geologist a body 

 of laborers, there is good reason lo believe some 



valuable discoveries would have been made. We 

 have, in several parts of the Eastern Shore, indi- 

 cations of iron ore^ convenient to navigable wa- 

 ter ; and the disclosure of marl alone would have 

 been of more advantage, than all the profits, di- 

 rect and derivative, promised by the internal im- 

 provers to Eastern Shore men. 



I think Prolessor Ducatel has, in his late report, 

 stepped uul of the line of his avocation, by recom- 

 mending the extension of the canal from Cumber- 

 land to Savage River, a distance of thirty miles. 

 In the true spirit of an internal improver, he 

 makes a small estimate of the costs, and a large 

 calculaiion of the profits. For internal improve- 

 ments Maryland has now upon her a debt of fif- 

 teen millions of dollars. They have become a 

 nauseous dose to the people. The waters of Dat- 

 chet Mead were not more odious to Sir John Fal- 

 slatf. Agricola. 



Eastern Shore, Md., jfpril 12, 1841. 



THE COTTON GIN. AMERICAN INVENTIONS. 



From tlie Baltimore American. 



An arfule in a late number of Hunt's Mer- 

 chant's Magazine gives a biiel history of the cot- 

 ton plant and of its rapidly extended cultivation in 

 the Uniled- Slates. 



The state ol Georgia, it appears, was the first 

 in the Union to begin the cultivation of cotton. 

 The plant itselt was indigenous to this continent, 

 and coiion liibrics were worn very generally by 

 the Mexicans at the tirhe of the invasion of that 

 country by Cortez. But the culture of cotton did 

 not become general in any of the North Ameri- 

 can colonies while they remained subject to Great 

 Britain. The first exportation of the article took 

 place in 1784, eight bags having been sent to 

 London. This small lot was seized by the Bri- 

 tish custom house officers under the belief that 

 cotton was not a product of the United States. 



The inventions of Arkvvright, Watt, and others, 

 by which machinery and steam power were ap- 

 plied lo the manufacture of cotton, caused anew 

 impulse lo be given lo the cultivation of the plant. 

 But the invention of the cotton gin by Whitney, 

 in this country, constitutes perhaps the most im- 

 portant era in the history of this useful commodity. 

 Belbre that event the process of disengaging the 

 seed Irom the fibre was altogether by hand, and of 

 course very tedious. The planter was limited in 

 the quantity of his crops by the necessity he was 

 under of raising no more than he could prepare, 

 lor market by the slow operation of picking out 

 the seeds, one at a time. 



When*Whitney had constructed his first cotton 

 gin, great excitement was produced among the 

 planters as soon as a knowledge of the lact got 

 abroad. The building in which he had secluded 

 his machine 10 keep It secret until he could pro- 

 cure a patent was broken open by ihe people of 

 the neighborhood, and the plan of the invention 

 ascertained. It was in Georgia that the first 

 model was made, and very soon machines copied 

 from it were in operation throughout the elate, 

 Whitney resorted to litigation lo recover his just 

 rights ; but he lound it very ditficult lo prove that 

 his machine had ever been used in Georgia, 

 although the clatter of some of ihem could be 



