216 



GENESEE FARMER. 



Sept. 



[Editorial 



X^'\ Fair. — Wool Growing ai llie South. 



of wheat. The competition for the liberal pre- 

 miums ofTored for the best samples of this grain 

 , at the Fair, was much closer than I ever saw in 

 St,..nk .Moumain, tiporL'ia, Aug. Jfi. isw. I the State of New York. Specimens were pre- 

 OxK of the largest Agricultural Fairs ever j scnted from South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama 

 held in Ccorgia has just closed at this famous j and Georgia— amountirg in all to 100 bu-shels 

 summer retreat. The Association embraces j or more. The red wheat took tho first pre- 

 members who reside in Soutli Carolina, Alabama! mium, in prefence to the white flint, or "little 

 and Tennessee, as well as in this Kmj)ire State | v,'hi!e." So soon as the railway is completed 

 of the South. About ten thousand persons i from Nashville to the Georgia road.s, which e.\- 



tend to the Atlantic cities of Savannah and 



have attended the exhibition 



"Stone Mountain" is itself an object of great 

 attraction. It is an isolated granite rock, forced 

 up by volcanic action below the earth's crust, 

 to over 2,000 feet in height above the sur- 

 rounding plain. The distance around the base 

 of the rock is not more than two miles, I should 

 judge. From the rounded ape.K quite down to 

 the level surface of the earth, the granite is 

 much weathered, and every where covered with 

 different varieties of the moss tribe. In some 

 places, where the rock is somewhat friable and 

 more readily decomposed by the conjoint action 

 of oxygen, carbonic acid, rains, frost and solar 

 influence, basins have been formed, which hold 

 moisture, sand, alumina, iron and other mineral 

 elements of the abraded granite ; and also a 

 rich hlack mould derived from the debris of 

 cryptogamic plants. This soil now bears oaks, 

 chesnut.s, pines, and other forest trees that exist 

 in the neighborhood. The summit of the moun- 

 tain can be reached only on one side. It is 

 crowned with a wooden tower some 200 feet in 

 lioight. It would not be very expensive to con- 

 struct a good carriage road to the top, and erect 

 a public house there. Being between three and 



Cliarleston, an immense amount of Tennessee 

 flour, meal, pork, beef and tobacco will reach 

 the seaboard by this new route. Spurs of the 

 Allegany Mountains are now being perforated 

 for the strong iron horse to pass through, with 

 his train of flying cars. Railroads at the South 

 are doing a good business, and have the promise 

 of a vast increase when completed. Travel on 



them is about twice as expensive 



pel 



mile as at 



the North. 



Cotton, corn, v/heat and rice crops are better 

 than an average this season, so far as it has ex- 

 tended. Wheat and corn are made ; cotton and 

 rice have some hazards still to encounter. 



For the dairy business and raising cattle. 

 Northern Georgia presents peculiar advantages, 

 ('heese is scarce and high ; whilst fat cattle can 

 be sent to Charleston and other Atlantic cities 

 very cheaply, by railroads. Grass grows well 

 in the mountain districts, and land is very low 

 in price. This is destined to be a great stock 

 producing region — including portions of North 

 and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and 

 Alabama. Men and women are said to live 

 to laugh and wax fat more than one hundred 

 e. 



four thousand feet above the ocean, the air is years, i. e. white people. Negroes are said to 

 very cool for this climate, and remarkably pure jive much longer. Those born and browght up 

 and bracing. There are but a few acres on the on rice plantations on the sea coast, are an inferi- 



top of the rock so level that one can safely walk 

 over it. It is a great curiosity. 



The Fair was honored by the presence of a 

 few blooded stallions, mares and colt.s,and several 

 well bred Durhams. Not a sheep was exhibited, 

 and but '(ew swine. 'J'he sheep is the most neg- 

 lected animal at the South. When that extra- 

 ordinary man, John Randoli'ii, (who was a 

 great lover of horses,) said that he "would go 

 ten rods to kick a sheep," he but expressed the 

 popular feeling that still prevails in all the 

 planting communities that I have visited. Tiie 

 fleece of the sheep seems to be regarded as the 

 competitor of cotton in clothing the people of all 

 civilized nations. Cotton lands mu.st be far 

 more worn and washed, and less abundant, be- 

 fore any planters of the South will abandon cotton 

 culture and dog husban(h-y for wool gi-owing. 

 For the latter business Northern Georgia, or the 

 Cherokee country, possesses great natural ad- 

 vantages. There are very few wolves, liut any 

 quantity of vicious dogs. It is mostly a limestone 

 region and just beginning to produce a good deal 



or race as compared witli the up country blacks. 

 Go to the mountains in any nation to find men 

 who are men. Thousands of low-land planters 

 pass their summers, and spend much of their 

 annual incomes in the hills and mountains at 

 the north of them. This region is preferred 

 because it is nearer home than Saratoga or New- 

 England ; and families run no risk of having 

 their servants enticed aw'ay from them. The 

 political anti-slavery movements at the North 

 excite no little discussion and feeling in this 

 quarter of the Union. 



The Potatu Rot. — The Germantowu Telegrapli .says : 

 — "Mr. John Goodfellovv. of this borough, has sent to us a 

 piitaio rine, wliic.'i prcrnaturcly died, and wliich, upon ex- 

 ariiinalion, is found to havr been destroyed Inj a ivorm, pene- 

 tiating tlie heart of the vine, and eating out its vitality for 

 nearly twelve inelies, (down nearly to the potato itself,) 

 and one in<'.l) beneath tiie surface of the ground, where the 

 worm died, and now remains. We learn that other vine? 

 are airecled in the same way : but whether, after all that 

 has been vvritteti upon tlie subjeet, and after all the philos- 

 ophifal researclies made, and opinions expressed, lliis should 

 Oetliecaui^'^dft/iepntaio rot, we cannot decide before we 

 have additional proof. Yet it strikes us that this is the 

 grai;d discovery." 



