PRINCIPLES AND PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE. 67 



in some work on vegetable physiology, though I cannot now 

 say where.* I have been governed by this impression, at 

 least in conducting my experiments, which have not as yet 

 been of a sufficiently varied character to enable me to deter- 

 mine and assert the fact positively. My attention was first 

 called to this interesting subject while investigating the cause 

 and effect of rust upon the cotton plant, which every planter 

 has seen, some of the features of which would seem to 

 strengthen this position. How desirable is it, then, if all this 

 be fact, that we adopt such system in our after management 

 as will not only preserve this natural chain of action unim- 

 paired, but encourage its progressive prosperity? It is not 

 enough, however, that we thus dismiss this part of the sub- 

 ject ; its importance requires of us a much more simple and 

 extended view. 



We will commence, then, at that age of the plant at which 

 it is first worked, by examining the roots of two stalks ; we 

 pull up one in the ordinary way of thinning cotton, that is, 

 we take hold of the stem and draw it up, and we have a single 

 long root (in most instances), tapering to a point ; we have 

 simply the tap root. We will take up the other with a spade 

 or hoe, the stalk standing in the centre of some six to eight 

 inches square of soil, we then gently sift or shake the soil 

 from the roots, and we have a fair specimen of the cotton 

 root ; we have what is properly meant by tap root, a plant 

 with a main root long and tap-like, or tapering, dipping deep 



** Since writing the above I see in a report of the sitting of the Academy 

 of Sciences for August the 14th, a paper was received from M. Dutrochet, 

 on the production and ripening of fruits. This gentleman states " that the 

 removal of the leaves of fruit trees, in order to expose the fruit to the di- 

 rect influence of the air and light, is exceedingly destructive." I suppose 

 he means destructive to the fruit. If so, his experiments would seem to 

 corroborate this opinion. 



