242 agricultural REroRT. [1489, 490, 491, 492. 



power to obviate its necessity ; and here again we must work by the rule 

 already pointed out : return to the soil every year, wliat has been taken from it 

 by the crops. 



489. To ascertain this item precisely, we must have analyses as a basis for 

 our calculation. But, meanwhile, a great deal may be done by simply taking 

 care not to withdraw from the soil, by cropping, anything more than wliat is 

 strictly necessary. Let no part of Vie crop that is not very profitably convertible 

 into currency, be lost to the land on which it was raised ! 



Every plant, generally speaking, is its own best manure ; nor will it, when 

 properly applied, serve as profitably for any other as for itself, i. e., its own 

 species. 



490. Exhaustion Caused by Cotton Cropping. — Cotton as a crop, when 

 nothing but the lint is actually exported, is one of the least exhausting crops 

 known. The amount of mineral ingredients in a four hundred pound bale of 

 cotton, is no more than is contained in seven to eight bushels of corn ; less by 

 twenty to twenty-five bushels than it is usual to raise on land which will bring 

 a bale of cotton per acre. 



But the matter assumes a different aspect, if we fail to return to the soil the 

 seed and the stalk. In this case, according to the analyses we possess of these 

 parts of the cotton plant, and their proportion by weight to the lint, the amount 

 of mineral ingredients withdrawn from the soil, is iully twice as great as that 

 which is contained in a corresponding crop of corn. Twelve hundred and 

 seventy-five pounds of seed cotton (assumed as yielding a four hundred pound 

 bale of ginned cotton) contain about forty-two pounds of mineral ingredients; 

 of these, four pounds only belong to the lint, and represent, therefore, the neces- 

 sary exhaustion of the soil, while thirty-eight pounds belong to the seed. A 

 crop of thirty-five bushels of corn (shelled) contains only twenty-five pounds of 

 mineral ingredients, so that in the cottonseed alone, we have mineral ingredients 

 sufficient for one and a half crops of corn. 



491. If, therefore, a soil equally well adapted to corn and cotton, will continue 

 to produce remunerative crops of corn for thirty years without rotation or 

 manure (as many prairie and bottom lands have been known to do), then its 

 productiveness for cotton might reasonably, under the same circumstances, be 

 expected to continue for more than a century ; provided always, that the stalk 

 and seed be returned to the soil. If, on the contrary, these are allowed to go to 

 waste, as is very commonly the case at the present time, the duration of the 

 land will be reduced to the same figure, or less, than in the case of corn. 



This comparison is not strictly correct, inasmuch as the ingredients withdrawn 

 by corn exist in the latter in different proportions from those we find in cotton 

 lint If, however, we take into account, severally, the most important ingredi- 

 ents of both, the comparison is thereby only rendered more striking. 



492. Manuring with Cottonseed. — In view of the facts just quoted, if it be 

 wantonness to exhaust our soil by incessant cotton-cropping, what t-hall we say 

 of allowing to go to waste, annualby, hundreds of thousands of bushels of 

 cottonsekd — that part of the cotton crop which coi tains by far the greater 

 portion of all the mineral ingredients withdrawn from the soil ? — It is true that 

 in returning the seed, we do not return what the lint has withdrawn ; thus far, 

 therefore, the replacement is imperfect. But we cannot have lint wi bout seed ; 

 if we obtain the seed, the lint is very likely to be there also. Suj pjse that, in 

 planting corn, we were aiming merely at obtaining the sluc\s, whereas the 

 stalk and ear were returned to the soil; is it not palpable that the loss to the 

 soil would be quite insignificant as compared with that which it sustains from a 

 full crop of ears ? And such, precisely, is the case with cotton. Now, consid- 

 ering the small amount of exhaustion which is necessarily consequent upon 

 a cotton crop ; is it justifiable that lands like those of Madison and Holmes, and 

 the prairies themselves, should already be on the verge of exhaustion ? Is not 

 this simple consideration enough to condemn the system of culture which has 



