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SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
SOUTHERN CENTRAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY- 
PREMIUM LIST-FAIR OF 1855. 
The next Fair of the Society will be held in Atlanta, 
during the week commencing on the 10th of September. 
We publish the Premium List in full in our present 
issue, and trustthat all who desire to compete for the prizes 
will give attention to the Rules, Regulations, &c. Much 
of the dissatisfaction which has characterized former 
Fairs, undoubtedly sprung from inattention on the 
part of exhibitors to the Rules of the Society, The diffi- 
culty — nay, almost impossibility — of obtaining Judges or 
Committee men who are both competent and willing to 
discharge their duties properly, has also been a very seri- 
ous drawback upon the progress and usefulness of the 
Society. To these two causes, more than to any want of 
zeal and management by the Executive Committee and 
other officers, may be attributed the waning interest of 
the public in this and similar associations ; and as the 
remedy rests with the people themselves, we hope to see it 
applied. It is very ungenerous and illiberal to expect the 
managers of societies to devote their time, energies and 
means to the building up of an institution pro hono publico, 
without proper co-operation and support from the masses. 
Many gentlemen who have sustained, and kept up the South- 
ern Central Agricultural Society for years, have reaped 
no other reward for their toil than the abuse and misre- 
presentation of those whose intei’ests they were faithfully 
endeavoring to subserve ; and it is not at all to be won- 
dered at if they should now feel disposed to “strike for high- 
er wages,” and give over the management of the Society 
into the hands of the cavilers and fault-finders. We con- 
sider our Society, just now, at a critical point in its his- 
tory ; it may still be made productive of the most glorious 
results to Georgia and the South ; but to accomplish these 
results, the officers must have the earnest, active and cor- 
dial assistance of spirited, progressive agriculturists and 
of the people at large. We cannot think that such assist- 
ance will be withheld, as the present Board of Managers 
is every way worthy of confidence and support. 
Atlanta, as a location for the Fair, possesses many ad- 
vantages. It has a very healthy and agreeable climate — 
is central; of easy access from all points; and affords 
ample hotel accommodations for a multitude of people. 
We think the interests of the Society would be greatly ad- 
vanced w^ere the Fair “settled down” at Atlanta for the 
next five years; provided that city is disposed to offer the 
proper inducements. 
HOW TO USE BONES. 
Where the oil of vitriol is as expensive and difficult to 
be had as it is in the interior of Georgia, and bone mills 
are not in the country, one is at a loss how to use the 
bones that may be collected in the course of a year, for 
agricultural purposes. If phosphates were abundant in 
the soil, the wasting of nearly all the bone earth taken out 
of the surface of the ground by the feeding of stock, and 
tillage, might not produce any immediate ill effects ; but 
unfortunately, the phosphate of lime exists only very 
sparingly in most of the land under cultivation, and to 
throw it away, as is now done, is a prominent defect in 
modern agr' culture. Every cultivator can gather bones 
and break them up into small pieces with an old axe or 
sledge-hammer and cover them in a heap of fermenting 
manure, where the c arbor ‘c acid and other solvent will 
dissolve most of the n in a few months, I'cady for the 
nourisnment of growing plants. 
Bones boiled some time in a strong ley made from wood 
ashes, crumble into a powder, because the alkali combines 
with, and abstracts all their animal parts. Mixed with 
dry loam, mould or compost, such ley and bone dust are 
a durable and excellent fertilizer. In this way, the bone 
earth is less soluble than when treated v/ith the oil of vit- 
riol, because it is not a super phosphate, like the bone 
earth of commerce, but the mineral remains as it existed 
in the bones before they were boiled in ley. Where one 
can obtain sulphuric acid at a moderate price, he had best 
use from 35 to 40 pounds of vitriol, according to its 
strength and cost, to 100 pounds of dry bones. The lat- 
ter should be broken as fine as practicable; and the acid 
should be mixed with four or five times its weight or bulk 
of water before the bones are added. The half of a mo- 
lasses hogshead, set in the ground in puddled clay, to be 
sure that it will not leak, answers an excellent purpose for 
making super- phosphate of lime. Some one ought to 
manufacture the oil of vitriol in Georgia for all domestic 
uses ; as the sulphur can be imported vastly cheaper than 
the corrosive acid. It is made in Baltimore. If this acid 
were as cheap at the South as it is in England, it would 
be worth millions to the cotton-growing States, for they 
need, above all things, in a business point of view, cheap 
fertilizers to aid in the production of their great staples. 
Flour is now selling in Athens at six dollars per 100 Ibs.^ 
and meal proportionably high. Suchj)rices, in a small in- 
land town in a grain-growing district, are calculated to 
turn public attention to all concentrated manures ; and 
among them, bones are not the least important. The 
growing consumption of imported super-phosphates and 
Mexican guano, (which is mainly bone-earth) indicates 
one of the most pressing wants of the soil. Men engaged 
,in the manufacture of vitriolized bones, pay ^20 a ton,, 
and often more, for those that they sell at a round profit. 
As far as practicable, all the raw material of crops should 
be drawn from our own home resources, and husbanded 
at all times with perfect economy. After this shall have 
been done, poor lands will still require imported manure 
of some kind to obtain the hignest reward for rural indus- 
try. Without the elements of crops in the soil, plowing, 
planting and hoeing all go for nothing. Hence, the writ- 
er is laboring to gather up all the ashes and bones within 
his reach ; and respectfully urges his readers to do like- 
wise. When it is too wet to plow, some hands may be- 
profitably set to raking up leaves into good szied heaps to 
rot, and form a quasi-manure. The acids evolved in the 
decay of such heaps will operate favorably on leached 
ashes and pounded bones — rendering them more soluble, 
and, therefore, more available food for growing plants. If 
one cenld be sure to escape a dry summer, leaves, bones 
and leached ashes plowed in early, would decompose suf- 
fiiciently to enrich the land ; some the first year, and more 
the second. Decaying vegetable matter is natui-e’s means 
for dissolving all the minerals needed to form her highest 
classes of plants. This fact applies as well to silicates of 
lime, potash, soda and magnesia, as to phosphates. L. 
THE FAIR OF 1855.-OFFICIAL NOTICE. 
Atlanta, March S, 1855. 
Messrs. Editors— ^The Executive Committee of the 
Southern Central Agricultural Society assembled in this 
place to consider the various propositions for holding the 
next Annual Fair, have decided in favor of Atlanta, the 
bid from that city being more favorable, and largely in ad- 
vance of all others. The next Fair will be held during the 
week commencing September lOth, 1855. 
James Camak, Seci'etary S. C. A, S. 
East Tennessee Fair. — The Fair of the Eastern Di- 
vision of Tennessee, will be held at Loudon on the 23d, 
24th and 25th of October next. We have received a copy 
of the Premium List, which is very well arranged. Letters 
of inquiry respecting the Fair, may be addressed to Maj, 
A, S. Lenoir, Loudon, East Tenn, 
