THE SOUTHERN 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



RICHMOND, MARCH, 1855. 



TERMS. 



One, Dollar and Twenty-five Cents per annum, 

 which may be discharged by the payment of One Dollar 

 only, if paid in office or sent free of postage within six 

 months from the date of subscription. Six copies for Five 

 Dollars; thirteen copies for Ten Dollars, to be paid 

 invariably in advance. 



§2§F"*&> subscription received for a less time than one 



Subscriptions may begin with any number. 

 §3f* No paper will be discontinued until all arrearages 

 are paid, except at the option of the Editor. 

 f^p 3 Office corner Main and Twelfth steels. 



ADVERTISEMENTS. 



A limited number will be inserted at the following rates : 

 For each square of ten lines, first insertion, One Dollar ; 

 each continuance, Seventy-five Cents. Advertisements 

 out of the City must be accompanied with the money, to 

 insure their insertion. 



It is indispensably necessary that subscribers or- 

 dering a change should say f rom what to what post office 

 they wish the alteration made. It will save time to us anfl 

 lose none to them. 



NOTICE. 



If subscribers do not order a discontinuance of the 

 Planter before the commencement ofa new year, or volume, 

 it "will be considered as a renewal of their subscriptions, 

 and they will be charged accordingly. 



%gf" Postage on the Southern Planter, (when paid in 

 advance,) to any part of the United States one cent and a 

 half per quarter, or six cents ner annum. 



. , .■ ■ : — — • 



M E C KL E N B U E. G . 



br. W ij.li vm If. Jones is our agent for the county 

 61 Mecklenburg. Our friends 4n that county will 

 please call and pay him, and they would add greatly 

 to the obligation if each one would bring two ad- 

 ditional .subscribers when lie comes to pay his dues. 

 Is that too much to ask in behalf of the Planter'? 



♦SOUTHERN FARMER. 



Wc omitted, accidentally, to notice in our last 

 issue that the Southern Farmer has passed into the 

 hands of the Union Agricultural Society of Virgi- 

 nia and North Carolina, withoujt, however, a change 

 of editors, Messrs. Pleasants & Nicol still remaining 

 at its head. We wish it all possible success under 

 its new auspices. 



PLANTER. 31 



ENLARGING THE PLANTER. 



A kind friend, in a letter lately received, pro- 

 poses that we shall double the size and the price 

 of the Planter, and offers his subscription and in- 

 fluence in aid of the scheme. We have had the 

 same thing proposed to us. several times before by 

 a very few of the more public spirited of our far- 

 mers, and nothing would be more agreeable to us, 

 for several reasons, than to adopt the suggestion. 

 But we fear it will not answer. The fashion of cheap 

 publications and the fondness of ''reading for 

 the million," which renders it difficult for any pa- 

 per, unless devoted to politics and general news to 

 sustain itself, especially here in the South, would 

 seem to make it a hazardous experiment ; and with 

 the lights at present before us we would rather de- 

 cline to try it. Still if a sufficiency of the friends 

 of agricultural improvement shall think differently, 

 and will sustain the attempt and insure against loss, 

 we are willing to receive suggestions in regard to 

 the enlargement. 



The advantages of such a publication would be 

 very great. Take one item as an example — the 

 effect of information as to the state of the markets 

 of the world on a farmer's profits. We here do not 

 study that question at all. Wc rarely look into it, 

 or even at it. The great object here is to get our 

 wheat into market as soon as we can thresh it, and 

 many, in their haste, thresh it damp and in bad. 

 order. . Yet it is a fact the February and March 

 market,, especially in Richmond, is as good, if not 

 better, than earlier in the season; and for these 

 reasons : that then the supply is pretty generally 

 exhausted, and, the millers, anxious to run full time 

 up to the close of the season, are willing to pay 

 more, whilst the channels of supply in the North 

 and West, which have been closed up by the win- 

 ter, are still unopened, and there is a demand for 

 freights to Europe. This indifference to the mar- 

 ket is not felt anywhere else that we know of. In. 

 the South, certainly the planter watches the fluc- 

 tuations in cotton and the probable range of prices 

 quite as keenly as the speculator or the factor, and 

 to quite as much purpose. In England The Mark 

 Lane Express, an agricultural journal and at the 

 same time the leading paper of the corn-growing in- 

 terest, is read not less eagerly by the farmer than the 

 coin factor, and he is as well versed in all the terms 

 of the market, and as skilful in taking advantage 

 of them. Wc cannot agree with the general opi- 

 nion that the best plan is to sell a crop as soon after 

 its maturity as it can be prepared for market, or, 

 as a very eminent and successful farmer says, that 

 the only use a farmer has for his wheat after cut- 

 ting it, is to sell it to the miller. We do not see 

 why he, if he has the same means of forming an 

 opinion that the buyer possesses, cannot as well 



