SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
103 
used to banking and housing 50 to 500 bushels per year, 
all my life — shall I say 50 years — and there is no more 
need to put potatoes up in sand, &c., &>c , than in wash- 
ing them before you put them in the ashes to roast, the 
best way to cook them after all — oh, for the days of ash 
cake and roast potatoes. This world of ours loses many 
good things in getting refinement. The man who sighs 
after ask cake, old-fashioned johnny cake, roast potatoes, 
corn dumplimgs, jowl and turnip tops, is too old fogy to 
read after ; but I am not of that stamp. I go for roast 
beef, plum pudding and champagne, with a S160 per 
thousand cigar — might as well talk big, it costs “noffin.” 
Yours truly, 
Lynche’s Creek, S. C, 
February, 1858. 
GUANO FOR ROLLING COTTON SEED. 
Editors Southern Cultivator— While the best mode 
of applying guano is undergoing investigation, whether 
broadcast or in the drill, each of which plans having its 
advocates, permit me to suggest a mode of using it, with 
which I am well pleased, and recommend as worthy of at- 
tention to cotton planters. Mix together two sacks of best 
Peruvian Guano, with one barrel of Plaster of Paris. In 
this, when properly moistened, rub your cotton seed, pre- 
paratory to planting. By rubbing the seed we are able to 
sow them with greater regularity, and, if the opinion of 
Pr. Washburn, of Yazoo City, is correct, it will prevent 
the lint on the seed from producing the destruction of the 
young plant, so often seen to occur in fields after the cot- 
ton is up, and it will impart a vigor to tiie young cotton, 
which is uncommon, and noticeable all over the field. 
This healthy and vigorous growth of the plant facilitates 
its escape from the young grass, and enables you to use 
the plow much earlier, and by its warmth or stimulating 
properties it is better fitted to contend with those enemies 
which are the offspring of the damp and precarious weath- 
er of spring. I mean the lice. 
Rubbing cotton seed, or rolling, as it is sometimes call- 
ed, is an old practice— in the days of “Auld Lang Sine.” 
My father, who was one of the pioneers in the cultivation 
of cotton in South Carolina, always rolled his seed ; as 
guuno was then unknown as a fertilizer, he used unleach- 
ed ashes, and applied the plaster in the drill, which he 
had to boat off from Charleston at heavy cost and then 
have it ground in a mill for use. The practice was then 
approved of, and time has not changed that opinion with 
me. 
One of our neighbors, by the bye, a very practical ag- 
culturi-'t. Col. Jonathan Davis, the father of Dr, Davis, 
the importer of the Cashmere Goats, used to steep his 
corn in the sweepings of the horse yard, which, as he then 
said, gave it a vigorous growth and protected it against 
the cut worm and the crows 
If these suggestions, as well as those of Professor Ras- 
pail, the eminent French Chemist, be reliable, and we are 
inclined to attach much importance to it, the addition of 
water in which aloes is dissolved to the guano and plas- 
ter before the rubbing the cotton seed might be the means 
of effectually driving away the host of insects which so 
often blight our prospects and send us away disheartened 
in pursuit of new homes, or new occupations. As long 
as “Colton is King,” and its production gives vitality to 
our Southern instikUion, it is our imperative duty to aid 
in its successful cultivation by any and every means, how- 
ever humble, in our power. 
J. E. Pearson, M.D. 
Vienna, Ala., Feb., 1859. 
8^*Modern drainage of is one of the offsprings of those 
laws stumbled on by experience. 
GIN GEARING-LEVERS, &c. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — I will endeavor, in a 
few words, to demonstrate the fallacy in Mr. Knox’s ar- 
ticle on Gin Gearing; and to prove that no lever applied 
to a shaft, has any advantage over a straight one passed 
through its centre. 
Thus. Suppose, instead of one straight lever you have 
twenty, radiating from the shaft like bars of a capstan or 
the spokes of a wheel. 
These being of equal length, are, of course, of equal me- 
chanical value. 
Now, fill up all the space between these spokes, so as 
to constitute a solid wheel. It is perfectly clear that any 
one point on the circumference of such wheel will have 
the exact leverage of any other point. 
Select, therefore, any point on this circumference and 
carve out a lever of any sha.pe you please, it is self-evident 
that you do not, in any manner, alter the leverage 
Suppose you cut one straight ; another like a letter S; 
a third like a “cant-hook ;” a fourth like a “helix,” pass- 
ing any number of times around the shaft. In each of 
these different forms, you stand exactly “as you were” — 
the straight lever being the measure of your gain in power 
and having the advantage of less loeight and less work ! 
In short, to gain power over the shaft you must length- 
en your lever in an absolute mathematical straight line ; 
and not, as Mr. K. proposes, (practically) lengthen your 
lever and then reduce it to its original length, by a crook, 
or elbow ! ^ 
The cant-hook is a great convenience where you have 
not a hole in your log into which you can thrust a long 
stick, or a projecting limb to revolve it by. The mechani- 
cal power in all three cases, being identically the same. 
A hand-stick thrust under a log acts a little differently, 
tending to lift, or move forward the whole mass, instead 
of simply revolving it on its axis. But a cant-hook when 
applied, is in the exact position of a lever fastened at right 
angles to the axis of the log. Its value is in the clamp 
which so fixes it ; and its power can only be increased by 
lengthening the handle. 
Mr. K. might crook a lever till he reduced a mile’s 
length into the space of fifteen feet, and he would then 
have a fifteen-foot lever for his pains. 
How he gained o. fifth hy the cant-hook principle is 
probably explained by his (and his neighbors’) mules 
resting during the alteration ! 
With regard to the line of traction there can be but one 
rule. 
The extremity of the lever traverses an invariable circle 
the mule that walks in that identical circle, will transmit 
the most power. 
Are not these things so '1 T. 
February, 1859. 
Blasting Stumps. — The Ohio Cultivator relates the 
experience of W.’^A. Gill, of Columbus, Ohio, in clearing 
a field of stumps by gunpowder, which really appears to 
be a most powerful “stump extractor.” He cleared a 
stumpy field of twenty acres cheaply and expeditioesly, 
the following plan being pursued for each stump ; 
“Select a solid place in a large root, near the ground, 
and with an inch and a quarter auger, bore in, slanting 
downward, to as near the heart of the base of the tap-root 
as you can judge ; then put in a charge of one or two oz, 
of powder, with a safety fuse, and tamp in dry clay or or- 
dinary tamping material, to fill the hole, some six inches 
above the charge ; then touch fire to the fuse, and get out 
of the way. The blast will usually split the stump into 
three pieces, and make it hop right out of the ground. If 
the charge is put in too high up, the blast will only split 
the top of the stump, without lifting it,” 
