72 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
®l)c 0outl)crn tiiiltiMotov. 
AUGUSTA, GA. 
VOL. IV.. KO. 5 ?ri AV, 184G. 
Mr. Farrar’s Proposition. 
In the concluding paragraph of his communica- 
tion, Mr. Farkar proposes to become one of a Thou- 
sand or less number who will pay one dollar a volume 
for Volumes 1, II, III and IV (bound) of the Southern 
Cultivator, and desires to know whether we can af- 
lord them at the pi ice I To which we reply, we will 
furnish any number that may be thus subscribed for. 
The friends of the work have now an opportunity to 
show their faith by their works. The Publishers. 
513= We have received communications for the 
Cultivator from D. Kendall, D. C. Rose, A. B. C. 
and Pedro, all of which we are under the necessity of 
laying over for the June number. 
Marl. 
We are under obligations to Gcv. Hammond, 
of S. C., fora copy of his letter on Marl, address- 
ed to the Agricultural Society of Jefferson coun- 
ty, Georgia. Since the publication of Mr. Ruf- 
fin’s Essay on Calcareous Manures, we know of 
nothing on the same subject calculated to do so 
much good as this letter, to the whole region of 
the Southern States, where marl can be had and 
economically used. We intend to commence 
the re-publication of it in the next number of the 
Cultivator, 
Southern Hemp. 
This number of the Cultivator contains a 
very important article for the South, in Gov. 
Call’s letter to Gov. Moseley, of Florida. 
By the kindness of W. McKinley, Esq., of 
Lexington, we are enabled to show to persons 
who take an interestin such things, samples of 
this hemp, both unmanufactured and made into 
rope. Any one who will call at the store of 
Messrs. Newton & Lucas, Athens, or at the of- 
fice of the Cultivator, Augusta, can see it. We 
refer to Mr. McKinley’s letter in another page 
for particulars as to these samples. 
The Southern Cultivator. 
Our thanks are due, and are hereby tendered to 
our friends of both the political and agricultural 
press in the South, and indeed in other parts of 
the U. States, for their kind notice of our annun- 
ciation of the fact that the support given to the 
Southern Cultivator would not warrant its 
continuance. We hope we will be pardoned for 
copying two of these notices — one from South 
Carolina and the other from Maine. 
Thee itor of the Southern Agriculturist^ pub- 
lished ii . Charleston, S. C., after copying the no- 
tice that this paper would be discontinued after 
this year, says : — “ We would much regret that 
such should be the end of the Southern Cultiva- 
tor. as we are fully aware of its great utility — 
indeed, the South cannot afford to loose any of 
its agiicultural papers — for although there may 
be many subscribers to those printed at the 
North, yet the generality of readers do not ob- 
tain their information from them ; but it is 
through the medium which the exchange of such 
publications diffuses, that we keep pace with the 
daily increasing knowledge of th^ times, and 
thus prevent our being thrown behind this age 
of improvement. Therefore, let the friends of 
Southern Agriculture jally to the support of both 
the Southern Cultivator and Southern Agricul- 
turist.” 
Dr. Holmes, editor of the Maine Farmer, thus 
speaks of the Cultivator and its prospects ; 
Southern Cultivator. — One of the neatest 
Agricultural papers printed in the Union, is the 
Southern Cultivator, published in Augusta, Ga., 
and Edited by James Camak, of Athens, in that 
State. It is published monthly in a quarto form, 
at one dollar per year. Ably edited and earnest- 
ly devoted to the Agr cultural improvement of 
that State in particular and of the fcouih gene- 
rally, and yet we are surprised to leain by the 
last number that it does not receive sufficient 
support “ to pay the actual expenses of publica- 
tion.” 
The people of Georgia ought to be ashamed to 
have such a story told. How it is possible that 
they can be so blind to their best interests, is 
beyond our comprehension. They sneer at our 
‘‘frozen climate” and ‘‘sterile soil,” as they please 
to term it, and shudder when they think of our 
storujs of snow and long icy winters, and yet 
can’t or will not support one monthly agricul- 
tural journal in their own State. Out upon such 
beggarly apathy as that ! With ail your bless- 
ings of sunny clime and fertile soil, of teeming 
summer and bland winter, we can beat Georgia, 
and always shall, unless you rouse up and make 
better use of the superior advantages God has 
given you ; and the first step towards it will be 
to give the Southern Cultivator a strong support 
The publishers take the responsibility of ad- 
ding the following testimonial from T. Affleck, 
of Mississippi, the able Agricultural editor of the 
N. O. Commercial 'Fimes ; 
The Southern Cultivator.— This is an ex- 
cellent S'oMt/iern journal, just entering upon its 
fourth year, and is now under the care of Mr. 
James Camak, of Athens, a gentleman who has 
labored zealously in the cause of auriculture and 
horticulture for some years past. The Cultivator 
is worthy of a circulation of twenty thousand 
copies. We shall have frequent occasion to bor- 
row from its pages. 
Sheep and the Shepherd’s Dog. 
Since our connection with the Agricultural 
press, we have written a number of articles un- 
der this bead, and have copied from other papers 
a still greater number; of these latter one of the 
very best, we think, is in this number of the Cul- 
tivator, written by a correspondent for the iV. C. 
Farmer. There are suggestions in this article 
of very great importance. 
The correspondents of the So. Cultivator 
have devoted a good portion of their attention to 
the subject of sheep-raising. But thus far, so 
far as we know, notwithstanding all that has 
been said, not a single effort has been made to 
establish sheep-walks any where in the South, 
with the single exceptions of Buncombe, N. C., 
and Ingleside, Miss. Nor is this apathy surpris- 
ing, when it is remembered how utterly regard- 
less of the people’s welfare their public agents 
have been, in not suppressing the horrid nuisance 
of worthless dogs. Mr. Skinner, the editor of 
the Farmer's Library, on this subject, says, that 
the disposition which exists to establish large 
sheep farms in the mountainous and other por- 
tions of the Southern States, so far south as not 
to require cultivated food in the winter, can nev- 
er be carried out successfully until some legisla- 
tive provision is made against sheep-killing dogs, 
and until there shall exist a more general convic- 
tion of the indispensable services of Shepherd’s 
Dogs, and provision be made for a more general 
supply of them, with the knowledge of the man. 
ner of raising and using them. For shepherds, 
Mr. S. thinks Indians and Mexicans will answer 
the best. But he suggests a difficulty likely to 
arise in the introduction and use of the Shep- 
herd’s Dog in these words. The danger is, on 
the first introduction of Shepherd’s Dogs, that 
their use may be abandoned in disappointment 
and disgust, from want of reflection on the part 
of the sheep owner, that the sheep, as well as the 
dog, will require to be frain«£f. In cur country 
no sight is more terrible to sheep than that of a 
Jog. All their associations with him warn them 
of danger and destruction. Mr S. says, it is re- 
lated of Mr. Jefferson, to whom a well-trained 
Shepherd’s Dog had been sent from abroad, that 
after explaining to his visitors the sagacity and 
usefulness of the Shepherd’s Dog, he led them to 
the fields, taking along the dog, to give them an 
exhibition of his fine qualities. On the first indi- 
cation of what he was to do, the dog made for 
the sheep, and they scattered in all direciion.s, 
terrified to death, and the dog not much less con- 
founded at their strange behavior. Some of 
them threw themselves over precipices, and the 
dog was never recovered. 
English Plowing. 
For the purpose of enabling bur readers to 
compare plowing, as it is managed on Southern 
plantations, with the same operation in England 
and Scotland, we have extracted from the last 
number of Mr. Colman’s work an account of the 
latter. On page 422, Mr. -Colman says: — “1 
think I may say that, in England and Scotland 
the art of plowing has reached perfection, and 
that it is unrivalled and unsurpassable. This, at 
least, is my opinion, which must be taken at what 
it is worth. I cannot conceive how it can be 
improved ; and this not in rare instances, and at 
plowing-matches, but I may say universally. In 
some cases the work has been better done than 
in others; but I have not seen an example of 
bad plowing in the country ; I have not seen one 
which, in the United States, would not be pro- 
nounced superior. » * * 
The perfection of any art consists in its accom- 
plishment of its particular object in the best 
manner, and by the simplest means. The per- 
fection of plowing consists in its performing its 
work exactly as you wish or require to have it 
done. You wish the surface of your field com- 
pletely inverted. You wish this to be done at 
particular depth, and the furrow slice to be cut 
in perfectly direct lines. You desire it to be of a 
certain width and certain thickness, and the 
same in every part of the fitld. You require 
that it should be raised without breaking, and 
either laid completely flat upon its back, or made 
to recline upon its neighbor at a particular angle 
of inclination ; and you wish it-so done that, if 
it be greensward, every portion of the herbage 
shall be completely shut in, and not a spire shall 
show its head between the furrows, any more 
than a straggling Frenchman on the field after 
the battle of Waterloo. And you want this per- 
