COTTOX CULTURE. 189 



cotton-cake is rich in bony materials, and amounts to 

 about the same quantity as is contained in other oily cakes. 



Dairymen and stock feeders, in this country, where 

 corn and root vegetables are abundant and cheap, were 

 slow to try experiments, and hence could not be induced 

 to use the cotton-seed cake. The great bulk of it was 

 therefore shipped to Liverpool, England, where it found 

 ready sale at from forty to forty-seven dollars per ton. 

 Small quantities were fed in this country, and a few manu- 

 facturers of fertilizers used it to mix with other ingredients. 



The cake can be ground into fine meal in a corn and cob 

 mill, and, in this state, if mixed with cut straw or corn 

 stalks and salted, makes a very superior feed for cattle. 

 This is the proper mode of treating it. The farmers and 

 planters in the South might thus, at small expense, convert 

 the corn stalks and cobs of their wide fields into stacks 

 and bins of forage, which, when made palatable to their 

 animals, and enriched by the addition of cotton-seed meal 

 and salt, would furnish ample supplies during the winter 

 and spring months, and save vast sums of money now 

 spent i n the purchase of hay and oats. At a low estimate, the 

 value of the cotton seed which hitherto has annually been 

 destroyed in the Southern States would have amounted 

 to not less than $7,000,000. This crude material might 

 be so transformed by simple processes as to greatly in- 

 crease its value, and supply to the country, hitherto im- 

 poverished by its destruction, just what it most needs. 

 If the discoveries which Mr. A. W. Harrison claims to 

 have made can become known and available to all soap- 

 makers, then, at no distant time, there will be made from 

 the cotton-seed the oils for ordinary uses, the soap for 

 family and toilet purposes ; the cake meal will supply good 

 forage for the plantation stock, and a superior fertilizer 

 for the soil ; and the ashes of the hulls burned under the 

 boilers, will yield a caustic solution, that can be used both 

 in refining the oil and in the manufacture of soap. All 



