78 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



shift of crops that can be adopted in a cotton-growing country. 

 In the first place, it embraces all the conditions necessary to 

 sustain the cotton-planting interest within itself, independent 

 of external or foreign aid. To this feature, I think, there 

 cannot be too much importance attached. Again, the several 

 crops succeed each other to better advantage, both as to their 

 culture and healthy growth, than in any other way that we 

 have seen or attempted. It may not be generally understood 

 by planters from practice, because it is not a common practice, 

 indeed it is of the rarest occurrence, how well cotton grows 

 after one year's rest or fallow. I conceive it to be, in its 

 healthy, vigorous growth, and exemption from insects, rrrl're 

 like growing cotton on fresh land. Nor will this be difficult 

 for any planter to comprehend, when he recollects that on the 

 fallow I spread 500 bushels per acre of good stock-yard com- 

 post, or its equivalent. 



I am sure I shall have no difficulty in persuading any 

 planter that corn grows better, bears better, and is less 

 trouble to cultivate after cotton, than after any other crop. 

 So well, indeed, does it do, after a crop of cotton that has re- 

 ceived a dressing of 500 bushels per acre of manure, that it is 

 yet a matter of uncertainty with me, after twelve years' ex- 

 perience, whether or not a good corn crop. is not more certain 

 without than with the seed ; and if we have drought, it is cer- 

 tainly best not to use the seed on corn thus treated. Then 

 we have the seed to add to our compost heap for our cotton. 

 Then, again, the effect of the corn and small grain crops on 

 the land being about the same, I prefer placing the small 

 grain after the corn, as it does better after corn than corn does 

 after it. After the small grain, the land lies one year in fal- 

 low. I have a theory about this four years' shift and one 

 year in fallow, in regard to its curative influence upon the 

 diseases of the cotton plant. Of course I cannot go into its 



