PRINCIPLES AND PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE. CO 



operations. One planter will now commence work, and the 

 plant, standing from ten to twelve inches high, " with a bull- 

 tongue or scooter-plough," and he will dagger into the soil, as 

 close to the plant as he can possibly get, some three to four 

 inches deep he says, " to loosen up the earth, that the tap 

 root may go down." Another planter will again, the second 

 and third time, run the bar of a turn-plough to the cotton he 

 says, " to kill the grass ;" thus it stands bedded in the mid- 

 dles, and " steaming" a few days, when these hot-beds are 

 ploughed out ; though I have even seen it barred the third 

 time, before ploughing out the middles 1 All this may answer 

 the purpose fully, and even look very well to the planter that 

 operates to kill grass ; but we have a latent cause operating 

 destructively in this practice, and though the certain effect is 

 not always willingly recognized, in the turning yellow and 

 falling leaves of the plant, it is not, however, the less obvious. 

 The planters operating thus will tell you, in the first instance, 

 " this cotton has received a fine working ; there's not a sprig 

 of grass or weeds to be seen ; but it does not grow off as it 

 should ; this little dry spell has checked its growth." But 

 partial showers may have fallen upon the other man's cotton ; 

 he says, " See my cotton ; how clean and nice it is worked, 

 though it is too wet, and does not grow ; rainy weather does 

 not suit cotton." This is the logic (I will not say universal) 

 of the devotees of this grass-killing policy, in accounting for 

 its disastrous consequences, and will, I am sure, be very read- 

 ily recognized as such by every impartial man. Now, the 

 truth is, I will illustrate the whole difficulty here, by a very 

 simple, though rather uncouth simile ; it is, however, not the 

 less pertinent to my present purpose, because men are not to 

 be benefited, nor will they improve in the practice of any 

 science or profession, unless they exercise the faculties of 

 thinking and reasoning, though such exercise be bought at the 



