COTTON CULTURE. >>. 



by frost, not by natural maturity of the boll, ^& T %iar in 

 staple as well as diminished in bullc W^4 / r J 1 



Suppose, for instance, cotton is pfeate^d ori^jfe'/first of 

 May, in a climate where corn is plantedafttrat^hat t^P 

 It has May, June, July, and August to grow in. 



If the heat of those months is as great as in 

 for instance, the plant will begin to open in September, 

 and there may be two weeks or more when fifty pounds 

 per day will be picked by each hand. But weather cool 

 enough to stop the growing of the plant, must come in 

 October, and, perhaps, not later than the middle of that 

 month, a frost which will force open the immature bolls. 

 Then follows a second picking of short, kinky cotton, 

 clinging to the inner surface of the pods. 



When cotton is from thirty to fifty cents a pound, this 

 may pay. Two hundred pounds per acre may be pro- 

 duced in this way. At thirty cents per pound, this would 

 give sixty dollars as the income from one acre. Of wheat, 

 at t\vo dollars, it would require thirty bushels ; of corn, at 

 fifty cents, one hundred and twenty bushels, to give the 

 same result. 



The above supposition is the most favorable that can 

 be expected north of 38. In the spring of 1862, cotton 

 seed was planted quite extensively in Maryland, Delaware, 

 and in Southern Illinois. The fate of a large majority of 

 these experiments may be summed up as follows: the 

 plant grew well and looked green, but developed little 

 or no cotton till frost, when quite a number of pods that 

 were nearly mature opened, and with cotton at fifty cents 

 a pound and over, the result was moderately remunerative. 



In Delaware, where the sea air imparts greater mildness 

 to the climate, quite good cotton is raised by forcing the 

 young plants in a rich bed on a sunny exposure, and trans- 

 planting after the manner of tobacco. The southern ex- 

 tremity of Illinois is less than fifty miles from Tennessee, 

 where half a bale to the acre is produced, and in parts of 



