90 
CULTIVATION OF COTTON. 
dropping of the bloom. In their infent state they look 
something like a small, conical apple soon after its emer- 
gence from the germ state. In their full maturity they are 
as large as pullet eggs, still preserving their conical shape. 
From two to ten grow on a limb, and not unfrequently we 
have counted two hundred on a single plant. 
It is estimated that one hundred bolls of cotton will 
make one pound of cotton in the seed. Now allow that 
you plant your cotton in rows three feet and a half apart, 
and chop it out to eighteen inches in the drill; this 
would give you on a square acre of ground sixty rows of 
cotton, with one hundred and forty plants to each row. 
Suppose that you pick on an average twenty bolls from 
each stalk, then every five stalks would furnish you with 
one pound of seed cotton, and every row with twenty-eight 
pounds. The sixty rows would furnish 28 x 60, or 1,680 
pounds of seed cotton, which will ordinarily make an 
average-sized bale. 
If in the month of July the crop is clean, blooms and 
bolls are loading the branches, and good seasons have 
cooperated with the planter's labor, he may, barring all 
future accidents, consider himself "good for a full crop." 
But if, on the other hand, he has neglected to cultivate 
the plant, supplying its wants and keeping oS its enemies, 
with the best seasons that Heaven can send, he will inevi- 
tably find himself " in the grass ; " and how to get out of 
that grass is a problem the solution of which requires 
more labor, bigger drops of. perspiration, and the extraction 
of more roots, than any thing in the department of mixed 
mathematics. Indeed, the problem may be thus stated : 
Given, sundry cotton rows, handsomely covered with 
flourishing grass ; it is required to find the cotton. 
Still further, it is required to save the cotton by ex- 
