CULTIVATION OF COTTON. 
87 
the seed in the ground. If your bed is rough and cloddy, 
an iron-tooth harrow may be drawn over it. You then 
open your bed with a small plough or duct-bill colter to 
the depth of about two inches. In this furrow the seeds 
are sown by hand from a sack or apron. The covering- 
block follows the sower. This is drawn by a mule driven 
by a negro. The apportionment of these hands is as 
follows : one to open, two to drop the seed, and one to 
cover. This plan is still adopted over a larg€ portion of the 
country ; but of late years we have been introducing and 
using with great success the machine called the " cotton- 
planter," which, with one hand and one mule, will do the 
work of four hands and two mules on the old plan. The 
cotton-planter is simply a light but substantial framework 
in which the various parts are adjusted as follows : The 
opener is introduced through the beam immediately in 
rear of the clevis-pin ; at a distance of two or three inches 
behind this comes a blunt, wedge-shaped piece of wood, 
the object of which is to smooth out the furrow made by 
the opener, and to prevent the dirt from falling in and 
fining it up. Then follows the revolving cylinder contain- 
ing the seed. This cylinder has small holes about an inch 
and a half in length and three-fourths of an inch in width, 
cut about every six or eight inches apart entirely around 
its middle circumference. The seeds drop through these 
holes into the furrow made by the opener, and are covered by 
a board which is placed immediately behind the cylinder. 
Under the old system of hand-dropping, three bushels 
of seed to the acre were necessary ; but upon the improved 
plan, a bushel or a bushel and a half is altogether sufficient. 
In a week or ten days after planting the seeds come up, 
and, under favorable circumstances, as thick as hops on a 
vine. In ten days more the young plant has attained a 
