41 



Improved houses for diminishing the labor and increasing 

 the comforts of the family are being made. Such combin- 

 ations are capable of making the farmer' s life more desira- 

 able and happy than any other, because his life is not 

 subject to the uncertainties of many other avocations. 



The farmers of Texas have a great advantage over those 

 of some of the older States, in not being obliged to buy 

 fertilizers, in order to make good crops. The State 

 Inspector of fertilizers in Georgia says that the people of 

 that State expended in one year $10,000,000 for fertilizers. 

 However, it would be unwise for our people to trust so far 

 to their rich lands, as to raise continued crops and not 

 return anything to the soil. Many years ago, the black 

 lands of Marengo and other counties adjacent to it, in 

 Alabama, were noted for their large yields of cotton and 

 corn, but continued tillage and no manuring has exhausted 

 them so much that now they will not bear profitable crops 

 without the liberal use of fertilizers. 



AGRICULTURAL .TOURNALS. 



Of these, I believe none are now published in the State. 

 Every farmer should take at least one Southern agricul- 

 l tural paper. The best weekly, of our knowledge, is the 

 Southern Plantation, published at Montgomery, Alabama, 

 Dr. H. A. Swasey, editor. Of monthlies, the Southern 

 Cultivator is well known. The Rural Carolinian, pub- 

 lished at Charleston, S. C, is another excellent journal. 



CLIMATE. 



; Texas extends froift latitude twenty-six degrees south to 

 •latitude thirty-six degrees north and longitude from Wash- 

 ington of a little less than seventeen degrees west to more 

 than twenty-nine degrees west; hence it has a great range 

 and , great variety of climate, from nearly tropical to 

 temperate. 



At Fort Davis, at an altitude of 5000 feet aboye the sea, 

 in the month of January, 1873, the thermometer was once 

 fifteen degrees below zero, and in 1875, in the same month, 

 it was five degrees below zero, yet yuccas, agaves, dasy- 

 lirions, cacti, are common on the prairies, in the vallej's and 

 on the mountains of that region at an elevation of 6000 

 feet and upwards. On the mountains the cold was probably 



