310 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR 
OSIBR WlliliOW FOR COTTON BASKETS. 
REMARKABEE ENGLISH DEVELOPMENTS^ 
Editors Southern Cuitivator — I wish to know your 
opinion about the Osier Willow you have growing — 
whether it will do for making baskets for picking cotton 
in ? Basket timber is very scarce in this county, and 1 
would like to get something that I could raise for that pur- 
pose. Please let me hear from you. 
Respectfully, B. M. H. 
Bastrop, Texas, August, 1857. 
P. S. — Can the cuttings be sent per express 1 
[The Viminalis, Red Belgian and Purple Welsh Osiers 
^11 make excellent cotton baskets. They may be used 
without peeling. They will grow freely from cuttings al- 
most anywhere, but moist land is the best. The cuttings 
-can be sent you safely per express via New Orleans, in 
November,— Eds. So. Cult, 
WHEAT GROWING IN ROTATION. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — In the press of other 
business, and the excitement of elections, I have got far 
behind in reading the Cultivator, and do not know what 
has been published and what not, but if you have not al 
ready given your opinions, I would be glad to see them 
in the Cultivator, on a system of Wheat raising that is 
getting to be very common in this region. I aliude to the 
practice of growing Wheat successively on the same 
land three, lour, and in some instances, six years. What 
surprises me very much is, that those who practice it, re- 
port, almost without exception, that the crop is better every 
year, even when they commenced on thin land. If these 
results continue, we shall certainly have a very respecta- 
ble Wheat growing country after a while, as 20 bushels 
per acre is common this year — many claiming 25 to 30, 
and some 40 bushels. At this rate I can see no stopping 
point, unless this continual cropping makes the land too 
rich for Wheat, and we have to fall back on Corn to 
check its fertility! 
Respectfully, East Tennessee, 
Loudon, Venn., Aug. 1857. 
Good cultivation often increases the fertility of land for 
a number of crops in succession ; but as tillage really 
adds little or nothing to the soil, in time it unavoidably 
impoverishes it to a greater or less degree, unless either 
water, some animal by its droppings, or man, impart fer- 
tilizing atoms to the land under cultivation. We rejoice 
to see Wheat culture extending at the South. It will, we 
trust, inaugurate a wise system of rotation of crops— a 
practice too little thought of by Cotton, Corn and Sugar 
planters. The soils on which Wheat, Cotton, Sugar cane 
or Maize may be best grown in annual succession on the 
same field, are exceptions— not the rule, in good agricul- 
ture. Care must be had not to draw general principles 
from isolated and exceptional cases, L. 
Selling by Weight.— The following table shows the 
weight of a bushel of produce as established by a law 
passed by the Legislature of the State of New York, April 
16, 1857: 
Indian Corn 
Wheat 
Beans 
Peas 
Clover seed . 
Potatoes . . . . 
56 pounds 
60 
,G2 » 
.60 
,60 “ 
.GO 
Rye 56 pounds. 
Flaxseed 55 “ 
Barley 48 “ 
Buckwheat 48 “ 
Timothy seed . .44 
Oats 32 “ 
The demand for cotton and the prospective if not pre- 
sent, inadequate supply of it, are, as oui readers know, at- 
tracting a vast deal of attention in England. It is appar- 
ently very obvious to every intelligent Englishman, first, 
that it is not certain that the demand can be furnished 
without increased culture within countries wherein its 
growth is uncertain; and secondly, they know that itr 
cannot be furnished within the United Stales, to the full 
demand, without additional lahor. 
These conclusions are evidently beginning to produce as 
moral reaction and moral compromise among the far-sight- 
ed men of England. Tropical products, they are begin- 
ning to argue, (not exactly syllogistically but inferentiaf- 
ly,) are essential to British welfare. They cannot be pro- 
duced in abundance except by coerced labor; theretore,. 
we must wink at the slave system in some form. 
This is not exactly the form of the argument, but the 
reflections which now begin to have a hearingin England 
lead inevitably to this stout conclusion Only one event 
is necessary to put it in form, and that is the inefficiency 
of the efforts now being made to stimulate the growth ci 
cotton without the United States. 
On the whole, the opinion of England is evidently un- 
dergoing a marked change on the subject of slavery ; and 
it will surprise no one to see it inaugurated in some form 
by the people of that country v.?iihin a few years. Their 
necessities demand it. The staple products of the civilized 
world are too closely interknit with slavery to allow a 
great manufacturing people to withstand the temptations 
which it offers . — Mobile Tribune. 
Refined Cotton Seed Oil. — A new article called “Re- 
fined Cotton Seed Oil,” has been introduced into the market, 
for burning and machinery purpose. It is a handsome 
oil, and sells at ^1 to SkOS per gallon, bleached at $1.10, 
and the crude article at 60 to 70 cents. Cotton makes an 
immense quantity of seed, the only use for which hereto- 
fore, has been as manure. There has been talk for sev- 
eral years past of crushing it for oil, but the general opin- 
ion has been that it did not contain oil enough to make a 
paying business. Recently two mills have been put in- 
to operation for this purpose, one at New Orleans, and 
the other at Providence. The public have not yet been 
informed whether the oil is good enough, or abundantly 
sufficient to make the crushing of this seed a profitable 
business. Some sanguine calculators at the South have, 
in times past, estimated that this seed would produce the 
planter, when it came to be used for oil, half as much as- 
cotton itself . — Boston Traveller. 
Tomato Preserves. — Take the round yellow variety 
as soon as ripe ; scald and peel ; then to seven pounds of 
tomatoes add seven pounds of white sugar, and let them 
stand over night; take the tomatoes out of the sugar, 
and boil the syrup, removing the scum; put in the to- 
matoes, and boil gently fifteen or twenty minutes; re- 
move the fruit again, and boil until the syrup thickens. 
On cooling, put the fruit into jars, pour the syrup over it, 
and add a few slices of lemon to each jar, and you wil! 
have something to please the taste of the most fastidious. 
Antidote to Mosquitoes. — The following letter v/as 
addressed to a London paper : 
“ Sir: Allow me to hand you the following recipe as a 
certain preventive to attack of mosquitoes, blat k flies, 
&c.: glycerine 4 oz , oil of spearmint 22 drachms, v-il of 
turpentine 4 drachms. The face, neck, hand -, in fa. ■ all 
parts exposed, to be rubbed with the rnixtine. 1’}.! -; w is 
given me by' an eminent American physician previous 
going into the State of Maine on a hunting e.^pedii:,.*! 
never knew it used without perfect success. 
