GOSSYPIUM. 



GOSSYPIUM. 



the English acre. The persons employed in 

 planting the cotton are generally divided into 

 gangs of three. One of these opens the 

 drill along the top of the ridge ; the most in- 

 telligent of them carefully drops the seed into 

 the trench, \vhile the third follows in his, o 

 more often in her steps, and with a hand-hoe 

 returns the soil while yet moist into the trench 

 from whence it was taken. For myself, I pre 

 fer performing this operation with the foot; i 

 is less troublesome to the labourer than carry 

 ing and using the hoe. It keeps the mind in 

 tent upon one operation rather than two 

 Walking along erect, the feet are alternately 

 employed to return the soil into the trench 

 upon the cotton seed ; and the whole weight 

 of the person brought to bear upon the foot that 

 has just performed the operation, presses the 

 yielding and crumbling soil into close contac 

 with the seed. This pressure of the foot after 

 sowing, is like the roller in English husbandry, 

 and is as beneficial to cotton as the roller is 

 known to be to wheat or other grain. Bu 

 after all this care you are never sure that 

 from your first sowing a sufficient number of 

 plants will stand. One night's frost, which 

 sometimes comes as late as April, will destroy 

 the whole field, and drive you back upon your 

 labours ; one day of a strong, dry, northeast 

 wind will tear, blight, and destroy your whole 

 field ; and upon the best and richest soils 

 when both these evils are passed over, there 

 is another ensuing, equally destructive. The 

 cock-chaffer or cut-worm is to be apprehended 

 during all the month of April, and as the cot 

 ton comes through the ground, and remains for 

 several days, like the pea or other pulse, with 

 but two radical leaves, every one of the plants 

 that are cut by the worm, either above or be- 

 low the ground, are destroyed; so that it is not 

 unfrequent that whole fields have to be re- 

 planted in the month of May, about which 

 time the worms pass into their winged state. 

 At the close of the month of May, when appre- 

 hension from these accidents have passed 

 away, a new labor begins. The numerous 

 plants which crowd the ground begin to injure 

 each other, and must be removed. Prudent 

 persons divide their removal into three opera- 

 tions, gradually adjusting the number to the 

 increased growth of the plants, which are at 

 length left in the drills, at from 6 inches to 24 

 inches apart from each other, depending upon 

 the fertility of the soil and the expected growth 

 of the plant, which rises in altitude, from 3 feet 

 to 8 feet high. And here it may be well to ob- 

 serve, that the cotton plant is a leguminous 

 plant (a green plant"), a plant that sends its 

 roots down into the ground, and draws much 

 of its nourishment, by its broad leaves, from 

 the atmosphere. This increased distance in 

 the drill, therefore, is rather to al'ow space for 

 the plant to extend itself at its inclination, 

 than from a desire to add nourishment to its 

 roots, for at last the whole field should be 

 shaded from the sun when the plants are fully 

 grown, and the number should be adapted to 

 that end. 



"But at every one of these thinnings, as they 

 are called, or drawing of the plants, the field is ! 

 cleared with the hand-hoe from all weeds and J 

 550 



grass, and new soil brought up around the re- 

 maining plants to support them, now bending 

 to every wind, from their tall but feeble struc- 

 ture. This course of thinning, when it is ne- 

 1 cessary, and the weeding, and grassing, and 

 drawing up, which is always necessary, con- 

 tinues until about the 20th of July, by which 

 time the operation has been repeated from 3 to 

 6 several times, dependent upon the soil and 

 season. About the 20th of July we may ex- 

 pect our summer rains should commence. 

 These rains are not tropical, but they approach 

 to tropical in their violence. Up to that time 

 no climate can be more temperate than the 

 climate of the sea-coasts of Georgia and Caro- 

 lina. Volney, from report, supposed it the best 

 in the United States, and the writer of this paper 

 believes it is so. The atmosphere is elastic, 

 the winds that blow every day from the sea are 

 cool and refreshing; they bring health and 

 healing upon their wings ; they drive the va- 

 pours w^hich have been gathered upon the wa- 

 ters, or that have arisen from the marshes 

 which margin the shores, over the woods of 

 the interior. But the time has now come 

 when evil spirits should prevail. These va- 

 pours have been collecting dark and ponderous 

 clouds upon our western hills; the equilibrium 

 of our atmosphere is destroyed. Whether it 

 is that the adjacent seas have become heated 

 by the mass of warm water which the gulf 

 stream brings along the coast, or that the 

 same general cause which operates with such 

 great power within the tropics, operates in part 

 here, I know not; but from the 20th of July to 

 the 1st of August, the winds change from 

 southeast to southwest, and bring clouds 

 charged with lightning and rain, in such 

 masses as to deluge our fields. From the time 

 this change takes place all labour in the cotton 

 field should cease ; for the plants with broad, 

 succulent leaves, and tall and slender stem, 

 heavy naturally in its growth, and feeble in its 

 structure, can illy bear up against beating 

 rains and strong winds, and requires all the 

 support that the original ridge in which it was 

 planted, and the repeated dressings up which 

 have been directed, can give it. And hence 

 arises the necessity of the ridge husbandry of 

 the sea island cotton in Georgia and Carolina, 

 and the importance of the repeated gathering 

 or dressing up of the soil to the plants, which 

 las been described. The month of August ii 

 a month of doubt and anxiety with the cotton 

 grower. Too much rain makes the plant cast 

 fT its fruit, its blossoms, and even its leaves. 

 The full moon in the month of August, too, is 

 he time when the caterpillar is expected. Thi? 

 worm proceeds from a small brown butterfly, 

 greatly resembling the candle moth. Thij 

 moth or butterfly deposits its eggs upon the 

 eaf of the cotton plant always a night or two 

 Before the full or change of the moon. They 

 latch in a few hours after they are deposited, 

 hen so small as scarcely to be visible to the 

 laked eye. Like the silk worm, they appear 

 o linger in their first stages, doing no great in- 

 ury during their first 9 or 10 days. But a few 

 days before they have completed their growth, 

 they become voracious in the extreme, and like 

 the visitations of the locusts in the East, destroy 



