CHAMBERS' PREMIUM ESSAY. 15 



or an inch and a-half thick, about eight inches broad, and 

 thirty inches long, beveled on the lower edge so as to make 

 it sharp, slightly notched in the middle so as to straddle the 

 row, with a hole bored in the centre one inch from the upper 

 edge, and screwed on the foot of a common shovel or scooter 

 plough stock. This wooden scraper and coverer, when drawn 

 over the row, covers the seed nicely, leaving a slight eleva- 

 tion to prevent the settling of water, and dresses the whole 

 surface of the bed neatly, for the space of fifteen inches on 

 each side of the drill. Thus all clods or obstructions are re- 

 moved, and a clean space is left wide enough for the passage 

 of the plough in the first working between the young cotton 

 and the rough land. This is an advantage of much import- 

 ance with a crop so tender and small as cotton at this stage. 



I have now conducted the operator, by a regular series, 

 to the closing operation of planting the crop. And here I 

 may be permitted to remark, that fine returns are sometimes 

 obtained with much less preparation. These are results from 

 the accidents of season, and not the due reward of well-di- 

 rected culture ; a prize drawn from the lottery, against which 

 there are many blanks j a demonstration of the futility and 

 uncertainty of all the best laid schemes of man. I pause be- 

 fore taking the next step. In this age of improvement, with 

 scrapers and cultivators, and all the endless variety of labor- 

 saving ploughs, and amid advocates for hard-culture and soft- 

 culture, and high-ways and by-ways, for making the crop, 

 " who shall resolve the doubt when all pretend to know ?" 

 and who shall decide, with such differences among doctors, 

 who is right ? and who can pretend to say what number of 

 acres to a hand will constitute a crop with such varted modes 

 of culture ? I shall proceed upon the supposition, that a 

 plentiful supply of provisions are to be made on the farm, and 

 then set down as a good cotton crop, ten acres to the hand ; 



