64 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



cotton, tell tales more positively contradictory and gloomy, 

 than I have room or inclination here to enumerate. 



The governing principle, then, in this improvement, is to 

 give constant and diligent attention to keep the meal tub well 

 supplied. In the first place, produce and haul out upon your 

 land a sufficiency of good manure, fully to supply the require- 

 ments of the plant all the season. In another place, I have 

 shown that it is a perfectly easy matter to produce this manure, 

 to which I will further add here, that the decaying materials 

 abound spontaneously, scattered up and down, filling each 

 nook and corner on every plantation, during all the season, a 

 wasting nuisance that might be easily collected, and converted 

 into a profitable revenue, if but one-third the time and atten- 

 tion, otherwise sedulously consumed in the butchery of the 

 soil, in a petite war against grass and weeds, the inevitable 

 produce of such latitudinarian systems of culture, was devoted 

 to that most valuable employment. In this most important 

 department of agriculture, science is actively engaged in ren- 

 dering the planter the most essential service. 



Having derived these important indications from the figure 

 and natural characteristics of a perfectly matured cotton plant, 

 the judgment of the planter is brought into active requisition 

 in properly adjusting its relative position in width of row and 

 its situation on the drill, in order that we secure the greatest 

 possible advantage in its subsequent culture. My own ex- 

 perience inclines me to the opinion, that when land is im- 

 proved only to the extent of one hundred and fifty to two 

 hundred bushels of manure per acre, less than fifteen square 

 superficial feet to each stalk will be too close. Nor will im- 

 provement carried to five times that extent, require greater 

 distance than twenty square feet to each stalk. Since, then, 

 it is found necessary that each stalk occupy this distance, it 

 would appear that the simplest course would be to lay off the 



