178 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



to the hand, and probably is not at all injured by the rot. 

 Such facts speak well for the natural resources of his soil ; but 

 "hard cultivation" for twenty-five or thirty years more with- 

 out manure, may so change the physical and chemical proper- 

 ties of this land as to weaken the cotton plants which grow 

 therein; and their seed, planted in districts where the rot 

 prevails, will yield crops equally subject to the malady. If 

 our cotton rotted, as described by "Beaver Bend," in our last 

 number, we should grow, or obtain from another, seed pro- 

 duced on fresh land to plant hereafter. The land on which 

 cotton is to be cultivated, should be ploughed an inch or two 

 deeper than usual, to give the growing plants the benefit of a 

 better pasture in fresh, earth. The subsoil is often full of 

 virgin, fertilizing resources, which superficial, shallow tillage 

 never reaches. There is a striking analogy between the 

 healthy pasturage of domesticated plants and domesticated 

 animals. If unchanged into new and fresh pastures, cattle 

 soon eat down, and finally kill out those nutritious grasses and 

 herbs best adapted to form pure blood, sound flesh, nerves and 

 bones. They may still subsist, and propagate their kind for 

 several generations ; but under far less favorable circumstan- 

 ces, and more subject to casualities. The over- cropping of 

 their land is a similar folly. It parts with some element of 

 vegetable nutrition, unseen and unappreciated by the cultivator 

 and there is left to him a disordered soil, yielding cotton plants 

 of unnatural, unsound growth, which Nature disowns, vitality 

 deserts, and chemical laws speedily resolve into their original 

 elements. As every thing that lives, decays or " rots " sooner 

 or later, it is a question of time and circumstance, when and 

 how this final result shall be attained. A reasonable supply 

 of potash in the soil is known to promote the healthy growth 

 of the woody fibre in plants, (which forms the lint of cotton, 

 and a part of its seed,) and also favors the perfect organization 



