COTTON CULTURE. 117 



so as the cotton field is only half as large as that com- 

 monly put in cultivation by the same number of hands. 



By following this method of thorough manuring and 

 systematic rotation, the certainty that the planter may feel 

 in his cotton crop is much greater, and the large amount 

 of cereals and edibles which he raises, and the abundance 

 of stock which he consequently keeps upon his place, ren- 

 der him much more independent of his merchant in case 

 of a failure of the cotton crop ; and he is also much more 

 able to prescribe the time of selling, and the price, than if 

 he had a heavy balance against him for pork, beef, flour, 

 and clothes, already advanced by his factor. But the 

 crowning advantage or recommendation of this system is, 

 that his lands are all the time growing better. The fer- 

 tilizing salts, incorporated with the soil in the five hundred 

 bushels per acre of rich compost manure, followed by a 

 liberal dressing of cotton seed the next year, are not ex- 

 hausted by the three successive crops of cotton, corn, and 

 cereals which are taken from the land. As the surface is 

 so ditched and plowed that the fertilizing properties added 

 in the manures are all retained, it opens richer on the 

 fourth year after enjoying its rest of one year, than it did 

 at the commencement of the former series, so that in six- 

 teen or twenty years of this "high farming," which is 

 nothing more than true farming, the cotton grower may 

 confidently expect to see his plants standing six and eight 

 feet high, the branches interlocking on both sides, each 

 plant loaded with bolls, and the field yielding considerably 

 over two bales to the acre ; while within rifle shot he may 

 see the lands of his neighbors covered with little stunted 

 plants twenty inches high, admitting of free passage along 

 rows that are four feet wide, suffering every year from 

 some of the diseases that befall, or the enemies that attack 

 the plant, so that the average yield, one year with anoth- 

 er, will not be much over half a bale to the acre. 



This almost incredible difference is wholly due to a 



