38 TRUCK-FARMING AT THE SOUTH. 



erably mixed with poorer food, as straw, shucks, etc.; 

 but if the vegetable-grower be a stock-owner, he should 

 feed as much cotton seed, or cotton-seed meal, as pos- 

 sible, and save the droppings of the cattle. The best 

 method of preparing cotton seed is to compost it with 

 stable-manure, and prevent a too rapid fermentation. 



No country is so fortunate as the South in possessing 

 in its cotton seed, for a long number of years considered 

 a mere waste product, the best cattle- food and one of the 

 best fertilizers in the world. If correctly appreciated, 

 only the oil, which has no manurial value, would be ex- 

 ported. While the stores of guanos are being exhaust- 

 ed, the quantity of cotton seed grows with the increasing 

 cotton crops. 

 



FISH SCRAP FISH GUANO. 



Moss-bunkers, or Menhaden (Alosa menhaden) are 

 caught along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Virginia, 

 in immense numbers. The fish are boiled, and, after 

 the extraction of the oil by compression, the more or less 

 dried refuse, consisting of the flesh and bones, is sold 

 under the above names as an exceedingly rich fertilizer. 

 For the sandy coast lands, I have for years given it the 

 preference over the best Peruvian guano, or any other 

 commercial fertilizer. In a compost, it readily under- 

 goes decomposition, changing rapidly into those com- 

 pounds assimilable by plants. Placed alone in the soil, 

 particularly in a dry season, it does not become suffi- 

 ciently decomposed, to make the phosphoric acid of the 

 bones available. This article is so useful in supplying 

 the manufacturers and manipulators of artificial fertil- 

 izers with the most valuable ingredients of many of their 

 compounds, and is by them so well appreciated, that not- 

 withstanding the enormous quantities produced by the 

 fisheries, it has been difficult to procure it of late years. 



