150 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



agement. Agriculture is, in our southern States, not yet 

 carried on as an art and a science, which it is indeed, but, un- 

 fortunately, only as a mechanical business, which we continue 

 to execute in that rude manner as it has been handed to us by 

 our ancestors, and modify it only according to our convenience. 

 We ask every thing from Nature, and are unwilling to do more 

 than is .absolutely necessary. The unavoidable consequence 

 is, that in a very few years we exhaust the best of our lands ; 

 they then refuse to yield adequate crops, and produce diseases 

 of the vegetables which blast our hopes. 



A plant does not only draw its food from the atmosphere by 

 means of its foliage, absorbing the oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, 

 and ammonia, which the atmosphere contains, but it requires 

 also a certain amount of the inorganic constituents of the soil 

 in which it roots ; it lives, therefore, mostly at the expense 

 of that soil. Every plant requires always the same nourish- 

 ment ; the consequence is, that if the same plant be cultivated 

 or live a long time on the same soil, it must, in the course of 

 time, be entirely deprived of those substances which that plant 

 requires for its growth. May I illustrate this by an example ? 



According to an analysis of the ashes of the cotton plant, 

 (made in one of the northern colleges, and which I give for 

 what it is worth,) it contains, in 100 parts : 



1. Potash, 29.58 



2. Lime, - 24.34 



3. Magnesia, - 3.73 



4. Chloride, - ... 0.65 



5. Phosphoric Acid, - 34.92 



6. Sulphuric Acid, - 3.54 



7. Silica, - 3.24 



Potash, phosphoric acid, and lime, are therefore the principal 

 ingredients of the cotton plant ; and, in order to live and sue- 



