16 COTTON CULTURE. 



compactly built, is likely to be the most valuable on a 

 cotton farm, because he will prove a faster picker than an 

 athletic man of brawny frame and large muscles. 



It is very desirable also to hire laborers that are accus- 

 tomed to cotton, and particularly such as are skillful with 

 the plow. A man that understands circle plowing, on a 

 hill place, that can carry his scooter, his sweep, or his 

 cultivator within two inches of a row of young plants, yet 

 never break or uproot one, and who can pick rapidly in 

 the fall, is worth a hundred dollars a year more than one 

 who understands nothing but corn or wheat and tobacco, 

 though the latter may "be the more able bodied man of the 

 two. 



Care should be taken to have an abundance of milk. 

 No drink is so grateful to the heated laborer, who passes 

 the whole day from dawn to sunset between the rows, as 

 buttermilk. The curd it contains is nourishing, and the 

 acid cooling. Milk in every form in which it can be taken, 

 is admirably suited to the farm laborer, and in stocking a 

 cotton farm, a cow to every three or four persons should be 

 provided. 



CHAPTER II. 



PREPARATION OF THE SOIL AND PLANTING. 



The plows should be started just as early in the spring 

 as the season will permit. In the latter part of February, 

 the ground in the hill country and red lands, will often be 

 found dry enough. The same is true of the bottom lands 

 in the latitude of Yicksburg, and in the southern counties 

 of South Carolina and Georgia. In general, it may be said 

 that the direct preparation for a crop commences with 

 February. The first plowing depends somewhat upon the 



