18 COTTON CULTUKE. 



soft, deep bed. The most thorough cultivation would seem 

 to require that the plowing should be continued until all 

 the space between the rows, or the " middles," as they are 

 called, are plowed or "broken out," in cotton parlance, 

 by throwing up the soil upon the beds on each side. But 

 the prevalent custom has been not to " break out " these 

 " middles " at the first plowing, but to do it afterwards in 

 the course of cultivating the crop. On lands that have 

 been thoroughly cultivated, this omission is probably im- 

 material. At any rate, the very best of crops are produced 

 year after year by this method. 



After this first plowing, the ridges or beds should remain 

 a month or so, that the soil may be settled by the spring 

 rains. Planting commences about the first of April, a 

 week or two earlier, say by the fifteenth or twentieth of 

 March, on dry lands, on the lower margin of the cotton 

 belt, and may be delayed as late as the tenth or twentieth 

 of April, in the latitude of Naslwille. But any delay after 

 the first of April must abridge that much from the cotton 

 picking season, for four or four and a half months must be 

 allowed for the growth of the cotton plant. Cotton that 

 is well up on the first of April, will, in a favorable season, 

 begin to open early in August, so that by the fifteenth a 

 picker can come out of the rows with fifty pounds a day. 

 Yet if the seed is put in the ground too soon, and a long 

 cold rain follows, it is, like corn, liable to rot, and the 

 plants, when they appear, will have a stunted and yellow 

 look. 



The varieties of cotton, and the different kinds of seed, 

 Avhose respective merits are discussed among planters, are 

 fully treated of in a subsequent chapter. 



The two grand divisions of cotton in the United States 

 are into Sea Island and Upland. The seed of the former 

 is black and smooth, of the latter dark yellowish-green, and 

 covered with a fine down. Botanists call the former " tree 

 cotton" and the latter "shrub cotton." The variety of 



