THE DRY ROT IN COTTON. 177 



are seldom viewed so philosophically as the present advanced 

 state of physiological science renders practicable. If we were 

 to say that the earth and climates, including air and water, 

 produce murrain in cattle far more in some localities than in 

 others, as similar elements of disease produce bilious affections 

 in the human family, the true sources of these well-known 

 maladies would be but poorly explained. Unquestionably, 

 many causes often cooperate to weaken the vital principle in 

 plants and animals ; and the early death and dissolution of a 

 single cell in the fruit of a cotton plant, are doubtless sufficient 

 to bring on the chemical disorganization of the whole boll, if 

 not of the whole plant. The rotting or decay of every tissue 

 is purely a chemical process, however this disorganizing ope- 

 ration may have originated. 



If we have read the agricultural literature of civilized na- 

 tions aright, such diseases as the blight on pear trees, the 

 premature rotting of apples, potatoes, and other vegetables, 

 and the rot in cotton, are not likely to diminish in the aggre- 

 gate, until farmers know more of the laws of nature, and of the 

 true principles of farm economy, than they now do. They 

 cannot systematically obey laws of which they know little or 

 nothing. So long as farmers in Western New York raised po- 

 tatoes on fresh virgin soils, they were exempt from the potato 

 rot as a prevailing distemper ; and we fear that, as cotton is 

 cultivated year after year on the gradually deteriorated lands 

 of the South, there is no strength of vitality in this weed to 

 protect it, indefinitely ', from constitutional deterioration, and 

 its natural consequences. 



In an excellent article on " Cotton culture, and selection of 

 Seed," in our last issue, Mr. A. W. Washburn, of Yazoo, Miss., 

 says that his crop averages a bale of cotton of 400 Ibs. to the 

 acre, although he plants " on prairie land twenty-five years 

 under hard cultivation, without manure." He makes ten bales 



