154 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



potatoes. The second year we plant the cotton on those fifty 

 acres from which corn, small grains and potatoes have been 

 harvested, and, vice versa, the corn, small grains and potatoes 

 on the cotton land. The third year we plant the cotton again 

 on the same fifty acres on which it grew the first year the 

 corn on the land on which the small grains and potatoes 

 grew the first year, and the small grains and potatoes on the 

 land which produced corn the first year. Every part of the 

 land has then borne in succession all the different vegetables 

 of our crop, and half of it has borne our principal article, cot- 

 ton, twice. The fourth year we let twenty-five acres of this 

 last-mentioned land rest, and fallow it, and divide the remain- 

 ing seventy -five acres into three parts, viz. : thirty-seven and 

 one-half acres for cotton, eighteen and three-fourths for corn, 

 and eighteen and three-fourths for small grains and potatoes, 

 selecting the cotton land from those fifty acres which have 

 only once borne a crop of cotton. If we observe such a change, 

 and fallow one-quarter of our land every year, so that after 

 four years every portion of the one hundred acres has had a 

 year of rest, we can cultivate our fresh land, according to its 

 quality, from eight to twelve, perhaps from sixteen to twenty 

 years without manure, and we will, with such a rotation, 

 scarcely perceive any decrease of its fertility. After the lapse 

 of those years, we not only keep up its fertility, but even 

 increase it, if we manure those twenty-five acres which 

 have been fallowed. After the lapse of four years, all our 

 land has in that way been manured. Such a system of agri- 

 culture is easily introduced ; and followed up with care and 

 without much labor and expense, it will not only not exhaust 

 the land, but increase its fertility; it will render agriculture 

 more easy, the land becoming more and more mellow and dis- 

 integrated and deprived of those stumps of trees and roots 

 which obstruct the cultivation of the soil so much ; and lastly, 



