SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
34T 
shrubs and flowers. “And assthe breath of flowers is far 
sweeter in the air (whence it comes and goes like the 
warbling of music) than in the hand,” let the perfume of 
the rose and jasmine and violet, and the thousand floral 
beauties of the sunny South breathe around you in spring 
and summer and autumn. Let the unfading evergreen 
rob winter of his chill', by environing the dwelling with 
perennial verdure, while the rest of earth is bare and deso- 
late. 
Old man, fill each proper place with its appropriate 
fruit trees — “the graceful legacy of old age to posterity” — 
a legacy at once a utility and an ornament. How can 
the trembling hands of age be more suitably employed 'I 
What more ornamental than the tempting fruit pendant 
from the boughs of the well-trained tree 'I If the “silver 
cord be loosened or the golden bowl be broken,” ere you 
may taste the prqduce of your labors, or your eyes be 
gladdened by the beauty you have created, when you are 
gone your children and your children’s children "will bless 
his thoughtful hand who remembered those who were to 
come after him, 
A well established farm, in whose conduct good order 
reigns — where “science and practice” are followed with 
that numerous and beauteous offspring which always at- 
tend their union — whose kindly soil, giateful for the hus- 
bandman’s care, returns to him, from year to year, more 
than it receives — whose progressive improvement teaches 
us that we have but begun to learn the fullness of Nature’s 
exhaustless stores — upon whose verdant pastures the 
bounding colt and lowing kine and blatant sheep rejoice 
each after its fashion as God made them — whose meadows, 
glistening with the dew drops, are vocal with the carol of 
the birds warbling their thanks for the deep shelter of 
their nests under the tall grass, and with the babling of 
the brook, shining in the sunbeam like silver, as it merri- 
ly dances down its rocky bed towards the quiet river — 
whose fields wave with wheat, oppressing by its weight 
the bending stalk, or are clothed with the deeper than 
emerald verdure of the majestic corn, or are honored by 
that royal plant, that king of the purity and pacific na- 
ture of whose reign this garb of snowy whiteness is an 
appropriate emblem — and whose habitation, simple, ele- 
gant, home-like, lifts its modest front close by the spring 
— such a farm is an anchor to the children of the house- 
hold. They become, as it were, children of the soil. To 
them it is almost animate, by hallowed rememberances, 
by memories, by innocent employments and by transfu- 
sion into its elements of a portion of the mind of those to 
whom, for generations, it has been a thoughtful care — 
stern necessity alone v/ill suffer it to become the heritage 
of the stranger. 
If this just regard be paid to Home beauty and comfort 
and value, when our sons, prompted by the restless spirit 
of change, or impelled by the desire of more rapid accu- 
mulation, shall think of the fertile West and then cast 
their eyes around them, it will shame them that they have 
comtemplated self expatriation. 
We may imagine one of them under the influence of 
these feelings to exclaim, “My Home, my happy home, 
my much loved home, my Georgia home, I cannot leave 
thee. These now fertile lands, my father rescued from 
sterility. These flowers my mother and my sisters plant- 
ed — these bowers their hands hands entwined. Here my 
infancy played. Here my erring boyhood was deterred 
from vice by my father’s counsels, and won to virtue by 
my mother’s smiles. 1 cannot leave thee. Here will I 
lieve and here will I be buried. ‘God do so to me and 
more also if aught but death part me and thee,’ ” 
No man ever talked to a virtuous, high-minded 
woman one hour without conferring a benefit upon him- 
eli. 
EARIiY COTTON FOR TEXAS, &c. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — I see in a late 
number of your valuable journal an inquiry from G, W, 
E., of Texas, for information as to a forward variety of 
Cotton that will ripen in that country before their annual 
summer drouths, and as I have some views upon that sub- 
, ject that I think may be interesting and valuable to him 
as well as others, I ask a small space in your columns to 
reply to him. 
It is a pretty well settled opinion with me from experi- 
ence and observation and partly from opinions of others, 
that all seed grown in one climate and planted in another 
undergo a sort of acclimating process and accommodate 
themselves, by degrees, to the changed climate to which 
they have been transferred. In illustration of this idea, I 
wiil state, as a pretty well settled fact, that our cotton 
region is going north every year, and that cotton is now 
successfully raised in northern latitudes where, twenty or 
thirty years ago, it would not have matured or ripened at 
all ; and this I attribute to the acclimating process above 
spoken of— this constant, but gradual, tendency of the 
seed to accommedaie itself to this change of climate. 
Consequently, I now offer the opinion that, if seed is- 
taken from Southern Texas or Florida and planted in 
• Tennessee or North Carolina (the coldest climate where 
cotton now grows), it will not ripen ; the plant has been 
accustomed to a longer period to mature, and it is only 
by slow degrees that it will bear change. 
Now, I think, if these positions are true, it is reason- 
able to conclude that the best place to get seed from, to 
have an early crop, is from the coldest region where cot- 
ton grows — where it, necessarily, has to mature quick or 
not at all. And, as evidence of this, I will state some- 
thing in the way* of experience. In the spring of 1858 , I 
advised a neighbor of mine to get a few sacks of cotton 
seed from Murfreesboro, Tenn , and told him I thought he 
would have earlier cotton than any one else. He tried it. 
and the result was that the product from that seed ripened 
three weeks earlier than the balance of his crop. I 
saw the crop frequently and found it did not grow as large 
as the balance of his crop, but was well filed and all 
ripened long before frost. 
This year I planted the seed of that crop and am now 
picking it. It commenced blooming ten days earlier than 
my other cotton. I have now picked one hundred 
pounds per acre from it, while my other crop has not five 
pounds per acre open. 
The stalk is large enough this year and as well filled as 
I ever saw any. No doubt, in a few years, it will be as 
slow in ripening as ours, but in any , country where an 
early maturity is desirable it might be best to get seed 
from Tennessee or North Carolina every three or four 
years. Early maturity, I think, may be obtained, to 
some extent, by close planting of native seed; and, no 
matter how rich the land is, I still advise close planting. 
It might seem foolish to Red River, Mississippi, and Bra- 
zos bottom planters to plant in feet rows and thin to the 
width of a hoe, but to all such I say, just try one or two 
acres, which can do no harm, and let the public know 
the result ; and, in advance, I predict an earlier maturity 
and increased product. I know cotton planted on Chat- 
tahoochee River bottoms, rows thirty inches wide, which 
succeeds well, and ripens earlier than in wide rows. 
Why is it that the richer the land the more corn you must 
plant to the acre — the more wheat, and every thing else, 
but cotton and that loss'? The truth is, thin planting, in 
my op'nion causes die destruction of more than half the 
cotton that is killed by frost. Hoping this thought mty 
be ot some service to your correspondent and others, 
I am, very truly , you s, Shc , S. C. 
[“S. C.” will oblige us ly furnishing ti e promised ar- 
ticle on Fattening Pork.— Eds.] 
