200 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



furnish, if preserved and applied, a considerable amount of the 

 best and most durable fertilizer, which is peculiarly adapted 

 to the production of the cotton crop. This is proven by the 

 identity of the constituents which compose bones, and are found 

 in the cotton plant. The planter in the marl regions, espe^ 

 cially where fossil bones and shells abound, has an abundant 

 supply of native phosphate of lime, which only requires pul- 

 verization, to render it almost as useful as the recent bones. 

 Phosphates in the bones comprise their chief value, which is 

 shown by the fact, that they make a fertilizer equally as val- 

 uable, after the fatty matter has been extracted by soap 

 boilers, as before hence, all old bones might be rendered 

 valuable if properly applied. Guano, the most powerful fer- 

 tilizer applicable to husbandry, being the ordure of sea-birds, 

 it is known, derives its great value from the amount of bone 

 earth it contains. We therefore regard the annual waste of 

 bones on plantations in the South, where more animal food is 

 consumed than by any other people in the world, as the most 

 suicidal disregard of that economy, which has furnished the 

 axiom to agriculturists " that manure is wealth.'" 



Many arguments abound to favor the adoption of bones as 

 manure amongst us. One is, they can easily be preserved, 

 and it only requires the same labor to do this that it does to 

 throw them away. Another argument in their favor is, that 

 a laborer, in a sack, can transport to a distant field, bone 

 manure which will furnish more constituents to the crop, than 

 can be concentrated in a four-horse load of the best stable 

 dung, or compost manure still another, is the little labor it 

 inquires to apply them to the soil. The great secret of apply- 

 ing bones to the soil, is found in pulverizing them into as 

 finely separated particles as possible, which fits them for the 

 operation of speedy atmospheric influence in order that their 

 constituents may be taken up rapidly by the plants. Grind- 



