COTTON SEED. 09 



seeds are of that kind. Why planters will hesitate to use the 

 improved seeds, when they use improved cattle, horses, hogs, 

 sheep, poultry, fruit, &c., &c., is more than I can understand. 

 Will any one hesitate to admit that there is a vast gain by 

 planting one kind of corn over another ? Yet the improve- 

 ment in cotton seed is fully equal. That humbugging has 

 been practised in cotton seed, as well as in sheep, morus mul- 

 ticaulis, hogs, &c., I know, and yet I believe good has been 

 done. Large prices induce attention to be directed to the pro- 

 duction of choice seed. Many persons rate cotton seed, as 

 manure, and as food, to be worth sixteen cents per bushel. I 

 have known ninety-eight bushels of corn grown with, say 250 

 bushels of cotton seed, there being full one-half the value left 

 in the soil, where not over fifty could, or ever did grow with- 

 out the seed ; this is rating cotton seed at twenty cents or 

 more. Who would go to the trouble of making seed for sale 

 at a profit over this of a few cents when thereby he is in- 

 juring his land ? It may be said, all can improve ? Granted. 

 But can all improve seed as cheap as they can buy. I do not 

 believe they can, because the man 'who can sell $500 or 

 $1000 worth, can bear extra labor and expense. I know 

 that extra labor and expense, of course, must be borne 

 to make seeds that are the best to plant. If seeds are not 

 thoroughly cured, they are injured by transportation, by 

 being in a large pile. All of my seeds are sunned after gin- 

 ning, and a hand does nothing else but attend to them. Even 

 if a hand can stir up and attend to 500 bushels per day, there 

 is scaffolding, and house-room, and attention, and no man is 

 willing to do this for nothing. A bushel will plant two acres 

 of land. I have planted this year forty to sixty acres thus, 

 and plant every year, more or less acres thus even at $1 per 

 bushel, the seed only costs fifty cents per acre, and if the 

 gain be only ten pounds of cotton, the planter makes a great 



