SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
Ill 
but it is obvious that no amount of turning over a ton of 
dung or of any decayed vegetable matter, can increase its 
quantity, or change the essential properties of any consti- 
tuents. The modern improved practice is to change 
the water that passes through the compost, or manure, 
instead of lifting the solids. With a good pump, 
manure- water may be lifted and run through the mass 
at a tenth of the expense of turning over the whole 
heap. As water runs through and into i!ie reservoir 
below, air follows it into the centre and bottom of the 
compost sufficiently to excite the putrefactive fermenta- 
tion. For common field crops, it is sound economy to 
have two thirds of the rotting of manure take place in the 
soil, instead of the compost heap. 
The only valid objection to a raw manure, and dry, un- 
rotted forest leaves, plowed in, is our inability to wait for 
either kind of fertilizer to decompose and nourish our 
needy starving plants. Our poor soils demand food 
that js wholly soluble in a few months before they can 
yield as large crops. One pays shave-money to sterile 
land precisely as he does interest to a tight-fisted 
money lender. In other words, to improve poor land 
profitably, one needs capital of his own — not borrowed 
manure in any shape. 
But where one has a little money to pay out for corn, 
peas, oats, fodder, shucks, straw, hay, &c., mainly with a 
view to produce the wherewithal to impart fruitfulness to 
exhausted old fields, nothing is easier than to use this 
grain and forage in a way that involves a loss. Crops of 
the kind named are now too high to form manure at a 
reasonable price. It is altogether better to raise manure 
plants than to purchase them, and we only buy for seed ; 
f. e , a little manure to grow more on poor, barren land. 
In using stable manure, we plow it in as soon, as it is 
hauled and spread. Much has been written on the pro- 
priety of covering manure eight, ten, and twelve inches 
deep. In garden culture thispracticeis to be commended, 
but in field culture, we doubt the soundness of the theory, 
where the quantity of manure is relatively small. When 
the dung is covered four or five inches, the earth protects 
I it entirely from tlie sun, it is moist, rots quickly, and readi- 
ly diffuses its fertilizing influence both downward and up- 
ward, as water either descends into the subsoil, or ascends 
; to the surface through it, by capillary progress. Allow- 
j ing the roots of crops to expand mostly within ten inches 
; of the surface if the manure be placed five inches below it, 
it is just half way through their maximum development 
to nourish their growth. L. 
GEOEGIA AND MISSISSIPPI PLANTING. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — It has been some 
time since I troubled you with a communication for your 
most excellent Cultivator. I have for several years, (ex- 
; cept the last year) been a subscriber and reader of your 
journal, from which 1 have received many useful lessons 
,| in that most delightful and interesting of all sciences — ag- 
. riculture. I have resumed my subscription, to continue it 
j as long as I “till the earth,” and the Cultivator is pub- 
lished ; and with it I resume my pen, and whatever of 
agricultural knowledge I may possess you shall have, to 
dispose of as you may think best. 
I love to read the Omllivalor., because it is published in 
the “Empire State of the South” — the State in which I have 
lived and labored the last 12 years, and the State which 
stands higher, in an agricultural point of view, than any 
other State south of “Mason and Dixon’s Line.” The 
Cultivator, no one can deny, has contributed largely to 
making Agricultural Georgia what she is. and every 
Georgian should be proud of your journal and of the State. 
Let Georgians, therefore, aid in its wide circulation. No 
man whose lot it is to “plow and hoe, and reap and mow,” 
should be without it. It will improve his mind and his 
heart. 
But I took m}'’ seat to say something of Mississippi 
Agriculture. And I regret that I can’t say for, it what I 
have said for Georgia. The cotton bale, here, is the all- 
controlling motive. There are, however, a few honorable 
exceptions. 1 visited Dr. Philips’ plantation and found 
on it a system of plantation economy, worthy his great 
name. There are many others who are trying to do 
something in the way of Agricultural improvement. They 
deserve praise, and they have it. But, as a general thing, 
we must reluctantly admit that Mississippi is wofully de- 
ficient in this respect. I venture the assertion that except 
cottonseed, and by about 3 planters, there will not be 1000 
wagon loads of manure hauled into the fields of Hinds 
county; and, so far as 1 know, I have located the first 
hill side ditch in this county. They have crooked rows to 
any “number desired,” but no horizontalizing that de- 
serves the name. The planters, however, are enterpris- 
ing and men of capital, and they make the cotton bales. 
The time is coming and now is, when the system of 
rural economy as practiced here, must be changed, or the 
country ruined. “Naught but a miracle” could save the 
country from dilapidation, and ruin under the present 
system of culture. If there are 100 acres of stubble or fal- 
low land in this county, I have not seen the man that saw 
it. It is Cotton, Cotton and Corn, Cotton, Cotton and 
Corn, all over the country. But more anon, I must retire. 
Goodnight. Yours, &c., G. D. Harmon. 
Utica, Miss., 1856. 
ROTATION OF CR0PS™AN IMPROVING PLANTATION. 
An intelligent and enterprising planter of Mississppi, 
writer us as follows. Would that every cultivator of the 
soil throughout the South could be induced to emulatehis 
example.* It would add millions to the value of our lands 
within the next ten years : 
Editors Southern Cultivator — I have taken the 
Cultivator iox s,\x or eight years and would not be without 
it for ten times the cost. 
Crops of corn and cotton in North Mississippi were 
never lietter than the past year. My own crops, all up- 
land, half of which came up in June, made 1500 lbs per 
acre ; corn, six barrels. 1 raise my own meat, wool, 
mules, flour, and. in short, everything for the use of my 
little farm, and generally sell enough to pay expenses of 
the same, without taking any of the proceeds of cotton 
crop. My land is all rolling; well circled, and with hill side 
ditches when necessary. Altera crop of small grain I rest 
two or more years ; plow under with two horse plows, and 
follow with subsoil, and flatter myself that my little farm 
is improving yearly. To do this it is necessary to have 
double as much cleared land as you cultivate in cotton 
and corn. Any system of farming by which land is worn 
out, or suffered to wash away by ibe rains, is ruinous, 
no matter what may be the immediate yield of crops. I 
have long since been impressed with this fact, but were I 
not continually reminded of it by reading the Cultivator, 
