SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
123 
have lost the last rose before thirty, and have gone in 
frightful numbers to an early grave. 
This whole subject of the training of our girls must 
undergo a thorough revision. Many other things need 
looking after besides shoes. Our climate has, unques- 
tionably, something to do in transforming the round and 
ruddy Anglo-Saxon lass to the pale and slender miss of 
Boston and New York. But sadly defective education 
does a great deal more. This differences in the training 
of English and American girls begin in the nursery, dat- 
ing from the first weeks of existence, and extend over the 
entire period from infancy to ripe womanhood. As it is 
my desire to furnish something that may be useful, rather 
than entertaining, I shall speak very plainly, aud some- 
what in detail. 
One of the first maxims applied to the management of 
both girls and boys in England is, in the words of one of 
their old physicians, “plenty of flannel, plenty of milk 
and plenty of sleep.” lam quite sure that a great many 
of our young mothers do not understand the importance 
of every pa°t of this maxim. It does not require a pro- 
fessional eye to discern that many an infant suffers from 
want of flannel, although the inexperienced mother has 
no conception of it. The child looks warm, and is warm 
to the touch, but is irritable, restless, unable to sleep. 
Were you never troubled through the night without know- 
ing the the reason, till you awoke in the morning and 
found that though you had not any sense of chilliness, 
yet you had wanted more covering to make you sleep 
soundly I Infants require a-great deal of warmth, and can- 
not be healthy without it. 
As to food, every mother in England understands that 
an infant must not be fed with all kinos of trash, ginger- 
bread, cake, pie, &c. Nothing of the kind is permitted 
to be given them. The shops of London grocers, drug- 
gists, and pastry cooks — abound in simple articles of diet, 
prepared especially for infants, as ‘‘biscuit powder, 
“baked flour,” “tops and bottoms,” “patent American 
corn flour,” “arabica revelenta,” &c.,.&c. “Plain, simple 
and nutritious,” is the rule here. Through xhe entire 
period of childhood, and even ol youth, the diet of Eng- 
lish girls is extremely simple. No tea and coffee, no hot 
bread — indeed it is a very common rule in well ordered 
English families that no bread must be cut, for old or 
young, till the second day from the baking and very 
little of pastry or sweet meats of any kind. Plain bread 
and milk, and fresh beef and mutton, roasted, or boiled or 
broiled — not baked nor fried — with plenty of vegetables, 
make up the principal food for English childreri. Pork, 
veal and salted meats are allowed very sparingly, as all 
English mothers know that they are difficult to digest, 
and especially injurious to a child that has the slightest 
constitutional tendency to scrofula. 
A well-lighted nursery is considered indispensable, as 
it is well understood that a dark nursery will kill a scro- 
fulous child. Their odious and abominable window-tax, 
modified and relieved of its worst features within a few 
years, makes Englishmen anxious to get as much light as 
possible into their dwellings, whereas we cover our 
houses with windows to an absurd extent and then, still 
more absurdly, and very injudiciously, beyond all ques- 
tion, shut out nearly all the light with blinds. 
English children must have abundance of fresh out-door 
air, every day if possible ; and an important part of the 
duty of the nurse maid is to take the children out several 
hours every fine day, including the infant. One of the 
most |beautiful pictures in the London parks, and in- 
deed everywhere all over England, is the innumerable 
nurse-maids, themselves radiant with health, with their 
still more innumerable children. Thus the English girl is 
early trained to a habit and love of walking which she 
never loses, and in this way secures rounc^limbs, and ex- 
panded chest and ruddy countenance while still a child. 
It is hardly necessary to say that the shoes of English 
children have thick soles and that their clothing through- 
out is very carefully adapted to the season and the weath- 
er. 
I am afraid American mothers will laugh when I say 
that the mothers of England are very particular not to al- 
low their children, before they are old enough to walk, to 
sit much on the carpet, as it is a posture unfavorable to 
erectness and fullness of figure. They are, therefore, 
taught with special pains to roll themselves on the carpet, 
and to lie on the stomach, all of which have a direct ten- 
dency to secure a perpendicular spinal column and broad, 
full chest. 
It is a beautiful feature of English families, that the chil- 
dren, instead of being pushed into a precocious maturity 
of dress and manners, and habits, are children all along; 
their parents love to have it so — simple, free, joyous, play- 
ing, laughing and romping all they can. It is not the 
least of the advantages of this, that when womanhood 
comes, as come it will, in spite of everything, it sets easi- 
ly and gracefully upon them. 
English children do not go to fashionable parties or 
keep late hours. It is a special study to provide them 
abundance of healthy sports, and, above all, to make home 
radiant with cheerfulness through the day; and, when 
the night comes, the young misses instead of staying up 
and being called ladies, are called girls, and sent to bed. — 
Happy Home. 
CORN AND COTTON CULTURE IN SOUTH 
Westerii Georgia, 
Editors Southern Cultivator — Together with my 
subscription for the Cultivator I send you plan of farming 
somewhat peculiar to our immediate locality : 
Corn follows cotton. The land is broken up or bedded 
up just at the time we plant. The rows are three feet and 
a half apart, and the corn spaced in the drill according to 
the strength of the land. The first working is about the 
tenth or fifteenth of May, by running around it with a 
doable plow invented ten years ago by the late Mr. Abner 
Ward, of our neighborhood. It consists of a wooden 
beam with iron feet, to which small sweeps or hoes are 
attached. (His family are making arrangements for a 
patent.) By running around the corn it plows out the 
rows thoroughly ; the hoes follow after, thinning the corn 
which is then from half leg to knee high, and trimming 
around the trees and stumps and at the end of the rows. 
In three weeks it is generally bunching to tassel. The 
plows run around it again, and, if it should rain about 
that time, so as to prevent the grass from dying, the hoes 
go over it again ; if not, it is “laid bye,”' 
In using these plows, each hand has two mules and 
changes at twelve. So a hand does just about double the 
plowing as he would with an ordinary stock, and we have 
only half the number of hands at the plow. The mules 
keep in better order when they pull them a half day than 
the ordinary plow all day. Ours is a soft and sandy 
land. Our corn is madeby running around it three times 
and one hoeing, and the average of it will compare favor- 
ably with any corn raised in Middle Georgia. The aver- 
age crop is from twelve and a half to twenty-five bushels 
to the acre. 
Our cotton is mostly planted on stubble land and land 
that has been lying out a year. We make from two to 
three plantings. The first about the 1st of April, the 
second from the 15th to the 20th of April, and the 3d from 
the last of April to the 10th of May. For the following 
reasons, viz: Some land will bear planting early. Some 
lands will mature a crop earlier than others, and this plan 
gives a better chance at the seasons; and, lastly, we can 
cultivate more of it and easier. The first planting is 
