170 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
the whole, from river to river, v ould be one dense 
forest.” 
[From the Alton Telegraph.] 
“The qtiantity ol standing corn, which may 
be seen from Mound Farm, in Jersey county, un- 
der twenty miles from this place, cannot amount 
to less thanyfae hundred thousand bushels. Nor 
is this ail, or the best. Fro u Mr. B. A. David- 
son’s residence on the bluff, on the road from Al- 
ton to Edwardsville, and about seven miles from 
this city, the'e may be seen, without moving from 
the same spot, by looking only in two directions, 
fields of standing corn, the piobable yield of 
which is estimated at one million Jive hundred 
thousand bushels. Beat this who can !” 
Extraordinary as is the fertility of the soil in 
that region, and large as the crops are that grow 
on it, larger crops are gathered elsewhere from 
soil made fertile by the hand of the husbandman. 
The Liverpool Albion states an instance in which 
a man made at the rate of 80 bushels of wheat to 
the acre. His land had been prepared for wheat 
by the previous culture of potatoes and cabbage ; 
and it had been stirred in the cultivation of the 
previous crops to the depth of four feet. 
To come nearer home —we find it stated in the 
A'^erican Farmer, that Mr. Smeltzer, ofFrede= 
tick county, Maryland, raised of the “Oregon” 
wheat, at the rate of over 50 bushels to the acre, 
the seed sown being n ;t quite one and an half 
bushels per acre. 
The same gentleman also raised the “China” 
wheat, at the rate of 47 bushels per acre — a new 
kind which ripens earijq and is said not to be in- 
jured by the fly, mildew or smut. 
These are the results of careful cultivation and 
thorough tillage of the soil. In the English ex- 
ample, the soil was, besides being made rich, 
loosened by trenching to the depth of FOUR feet. 
This woiiM seem to be useless labor, if we had 
not the authority of Tull for the fact, that in pro- 
perly prepared soil, the roots of wheat have been 
traced to the depth of two feet. 
Yankee Enterprise. 
The farm of Mr. Phinney, of Lexington, Mass., 
is perhaps one of the most striking instances of 
what Yankee energy will undertake and accom- 
plish. It contains about 160 acres, and most cf it 
originally, was very rocky and rough. Mr. Breck, 
of the Neto England Farmer, says that accord- 
ing to an estimate that had been made, every six 
feet square of thi.s farm contained a ton of stones, 
leaving out of the calculation the immoveable 
ones. This will give, he says, more than a thou- 
sand tons to the acre. Yet they have been re- 
moved ; and the land that was once thus covered, 
is now producing luxuriant grass, or is planted 
with apple and peach tree? — and in their season 
with potatoes, melons, &c. 
Just think of that, ye lazy conks of our sunny 
South, who will plow round stones and stumps, 
and over logs, day after day, and year after year — 
just think of removing a thousand tons o‘f stones 
from an acre before you can plow it at all ; and let 
shame burn your cheek, because that, with so 
great natural advantages over Yankeedom — with 
our generous soil and abundant means to enrich 
it, wit^ our genial atmosphere and glorious sky — 
this end of Uncle Yarn’s heritage is allowed to 
wear such an aspect of dilapidation and misery — 
to look so much like the very fag end of creation. 
Mr. Phin'ney is clerk of the county court, and 
his office is some 8 or 10 miles from his farm ; 
yet, by early rising, he looks over his farm every 
morning, goes to his office, discharges its duties, 
returns, and looks over his cattle by light of lan- 
tern. There is industry for you — another trait of 
Yankee character that we want to see imitated in 
this our blessed land of sunshine and idleness. 
Here’s another example. The Baltimore Ame- 
rican says : 
“ The town of Rome, in Western New 
York, containing a population of over 5000, 
has been built up by factories for making paddles 
and ours from, the ash, thousands of which are 
shipped by almost every vessel for En-^land, 
Prance, Germany. Prussia, Sweden, Russia, and 
throughout all the East. The Junks of the Chi- 
nese are now all managed by American oars, and 
the small boats of all Europe and Asia, are now 
propelled by the enterprise of the people of this 
one village.” 
Good Lecturing. 
The edilorot fho Star of Florida discourses 
after the following fashion, of the exceeding 
great folly ot his neighbor.?, in buying what 
they ought to raise at home. We like these 
simple truths told in this plain way ; and we 
hope that paper will continue the hoarhound 
until there shall not be found in Florida a plan- 
ter who shall not be ashamed to be caught buy- 
ing a bushel of corn or a pouftd of bacon — a 
plow or a wagon— a broom or an axe handle, 
that is not the production of Southern labor. 
These Southern States ought to be independent 
of the world. The people have the means of 
making themselves so, if they will but use 
them. — 
From. the Star of Flotida. 
A Word to the Farmers. — Corn was sell- 
ing in the Tallahassee market this morning at 
31 J cents per bushel. The average price of the 
last crop we suppose not to have been over 37i 
cents. The average price of Cotton of the last 
croD was perhapsdJ cents. 
The price of Bacon in the same market is 
now, and perhaps the average price during the 
season has been, 10 cents per pound. 
Yet, notwithstanding the relative price of 
these articles, there are many thousand tons of 
Bacon annually brought here from the West- 
ern States and sold to our farmers at these high 
prices, and their cotton sold at ruinous prices 
to pay for it. Can there be any wonder why 
our people should be embarrassed? 
But w'ith some of our people there is a worse 
state of things than this. The farmers of Leon 
county, as we have remarked, make corn at 
374 cents a bushel. In a neighboring county, 
less than fifty miles from Tallahassee, a large 
portion of the farmers depend upon the New 
Orleans market for their supplies of corn, 
which they receive by the wav oflheChatta- 
hocchee river at a cost of not less (in general) 
than onedcllar per bushel. They depend upon 
their cotton crop, and their tobacco crop, to pay 
for their bread and meat. Can such a system 
lead to anything else but hard times and embar- 
rassment? 
Again, the Florida farmers have an abun- 
dant supply ot most excellent timber, lor all 
mechanical purposes, at their own doors. They 
have an abundant supply of mechanical skill, 
if properly encouraged, in their own neighbor- 
hoods. Yet if a Florida farmer wants a plow, 
he sends off to the next market and buys one 
which has been imported from Yankeedom, and 
pays five dollars, and makes cotton at 3 or 5 
cents per pound to pay for it. If he wants an 
axe handle, scythe sheath, or any article of a 
similar sort, he pursues a like course. 
By such a system, hundreds of dollars are 
annually sent abroad, which might with very 
little trouble have been kept at home. 
“But,” says the farmer, “ I want to buy 
plows and so on, where they can be had at the 
cheapest lates. If I want an article made at 
home, I must run after the mechanic, hunt him 
up, and thf'D perhaps he will ask an exorbitant 
price. But I deal with Mr, Sharp the mer- 
chant — he takes my cotton — I trade it out with 
him — and it is very convenient to get anything 1 
want from him,” 
Yes, theie certainly is a sort ol convenience 
in getting what one wants without much trou- 
ble. BuT yet, on the other hand, there is a very 
great inconvenience in being made to pay 
through the nose, tor what one doesn’t want. 
Now, it may sometimes seem to the farmer 
that he pays less to the merchant for an impor- 
tant article than the same would have cost him 
if made at home — when in fact such is not the 
case. 
When a farmer buys an article which has 
been manufactured abroad, he must pay for it 
in cash, or in some commodity that will com- 
mand cash, at the place o( manufacture. And 
as cotton is almost the only article grown at the 
South which commands cash in a foreign mar- 
ket, it follows as a matter ol course, that the 
farmer must continue to grow cotton, even at 
the most ruinous prices, so long as they pur- 
chase their principal articles of consumption 
abroad. 
But if the farmer procured his manufactures 
from a neighbor, even at a nominal higher price 
— yet the money would remain at home, and a 
large portion oi it would, in the course of the 
year, find its way back to the farmer’s pocket 
again. 
The mechanic must have timber to work up 
in the different branches ol his trade. And he 
pays back to the farmer some portion of his 
price of his plow, for what, otherwfise, would 
rot in the forests. The mechanic must procure 
from the farmer, bread for himself — corn and 
fodder for his horse— shucks, pumpkins and 
turnips for his cow, and many other articles 
which the farmer could not send to the North 
to pay fo' a plow. 
And it may therefore often be really cheaper 
for the farmer to pay nominally, a higher price 
for an article if made at home, than a fewer price 
for an article of foreign fabric. 
Deep Plowing. 
From all parts of the country where sub sol! 
plowing has been tried, the testimony is uniform 
in its favor. We do not know of a single excep= 
tion. Even the political papers are urging its im- 
portance on their readers. The New York Tri- 
bune, for example, says ; 
“As to deep plowing, all science, all practice, 
all authority recommend it, and yet three-fourths 
of our farmers persist in skinning their land over 
from five to eight inches deep, or not half what is 
required. We saw field after field of corn which 
will not yield ten bushels to the acre, (and poor 
stuff at that) which might have been put up to 
twenty by deep plowing alone. Of course, one 
year would not exhibit all the benefits of this cul- 
ture, though even the first year, if a dry one, 
would show its decided ad\antages, but let land 
have time to get used to deep plowing, and it will 
tell you plainly how it relishes that treatment. 
And the man who plows deep is pretty apt to put 
something else into the soil as well as iron. He 
will have muck and peat from his swamp holes 
and a noble compost heap near his barn. 
“ We hear farmers complain, and most truly, 
that they can make nothing by their business — 
and this while they are paying taxes, keeping up 
fences, and perhaps paying the mortgage interest, 
on twice as much land as they can cultivate well, 
and letting half of it go from year to year, with- 
out tillage, without fertilizing, and often growing 
up to bushes and all manner of mischief. Now 
the w'onder is not that such farmers do not 
thrive — the marvel is that they manage to exist. 
Let any manufacturer, or merchant, do his busi- 
ness after this pattern, and he must fail — there is 
no help for it. 
“But must we conclude that bad farming has 
become inveterate among our people? — that our 
farmers have resolved, though they know better, 
to hold twice as much land as thei can till thor- 
oughly, and torment it till it ruins them. We 
will not give it up. Every farmer we see admits 
the evils — says he and his neighbors run over too 
much land, cultivate too slovenly, are not suffi- 
ciently wide awake to the march of improvement, 
