LIBRARY 



XI V Kit S.IT Y OF 



CALIFORNIA 



, 



PREFACE. 



This Treatise is not a compilation. 



Agricultural literature is by no means so rich in valua- 

 ble works on the Cotton Plant, that it is possible to select 

 from existing writings the information which, however 

 skillfully grouped, can make an excellent book. 



Twelve years of experience among the cotton growers 

 of the Southwest have been found by the author of vastly 

 more importance to the proper understanding of the whole 

 subject, than all which has been written. 



Of what has been before given to the world on the sub- 

 ject, I have found no matter more valuable than the letters 

 of Dr. Cloud, of Alabama, who did more for the true and 

 scientific culture of the plant, than all the other Southern 

 writers put together. 



His views, and those of that Bayou Sara planter who 

 wrote an admirable letter to De Bow's Review on the 

 Cotton-worm, have been freely quoted. Some useful 

 statistics are to be found in the New American Cyclopae- 

 dia, under the head of Cotton, and these, as well as other 

 tables, have been studied. The writer would also express 

 his obligations to Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, whose 

 lecture before the Geographical Society of New York is 

 rich in valuable conclusions. 



But whatever is of most worth in the pages that follow, 

 is the result of personal observation, and of frequent and 

 lengthy conversations with the most successful and the 

 :most intelligent cultivators of the great staple, 

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