MANURING, PLANTING AND TENDING. 55 



Immediately after planting, the middles or unbroken balks 

 should be ploughed out. 



The crop of cotton thus planted, which should not exceed 

 three to four acres to the hand, may be performed in good time 

 and well done. In a few days, say nine to twelve, the cotton 

 will be up, presenting a most healthy and thrifty appearance. 

 The next operation to be performed, as early as possibly con- 

 venient, is to plough out the middles well, the wide way, with 

 a good shovel-plough, having first run around the young plant 

 with a scooter-plough. The hoe hands follow and thin the 

 cotton down to two stalks, giving it a small quantity of soil. 

 This operation well done, the plant is at once placed beyond 

 all danger, since its tap root will now have taken such hold 

 upon the manure below as to enable the plant to outstrip 

 either grass or weeds, having yet to spring up. 



Under this treatment, the time-consuming and worse than 

 useless operations of bar-shearing, scraping, and chopping out 

 are saved, as much to the benefit of the tender plant, as to the 

 interest and economy of the planter, in despatching the hurry 

 and push at this stage of the crop ; and at the conclusion of 

 this first working, I have my cotton growing off, and doing 

 well. I have now no further use for a plough in its subse- 

 quent culture, but use the sweep a kind of horse-hoe I call 

 it a sweep in the absence of a more appropriate name. 



[Here follows a wood-cut representation of the sweep, a 

 kind of plough used by some planters at the South. The one 

 here recommended is made by welding two narrow wings over 

 the point of a scooter, or bull-tongue, inclining backwards, 

 with the ends of the wings two feet apart. It is so fixed upon 

 the stock (that of a common shovel-plough) that it will not 

 enter the ground deeper than one inch, if so deep.] 



The great and singular advantages of the sweep over all 

 instruments of the plough, harrow, or hoe kind that I have 



