VoL. I. AUGUSTA, Ga., AUGUST 2, 1843. No. 16. 
COMMUNICATIONS. 
Union Point, Grebne Co., G.i., ) 
Juiy SSth, 1843. ) 
Messrs. Editors — I have noticed in the 15th 
No. of the Southern Cultivator, an article over 
ihe signature of “A Lover of Good Ham,” set- 
ting forth the necessity of our raising our own 
bacon; and though I agree with him in the first 
and second instances, viz; that we should raise 
our own pork, and that the Georgia public are 
grievously imposed upon by drovers in the 
article of “Berkshires,” &c.” — still I cannot 
agree with him as to the fact, that we have no 
pure blooded Berkshires in Georgia. It is true 
that the country is flooded with a spurious breed. 
purporting to be Berkshiies, which are in fact 
but a remote cross of that breed. I fully concur 
with the writer of that article in censuring the 
cupidity of the western drivers in thus palming 
a mixed breed upon their neighbors, and in de- 
precating the credulity of the too unsuspecting 
Georgians in sufllering themselves to be thus 
imposed upon. But there are, nevertheless, 
among us some of the stock as pure as any to 
be found in Berkshire county, England. Col. 
John Bonner of White Plains, in this county, 
has a choice lot of about twenty or twenty-five 
breeding sows, and three boars, of the “simon 
pures.” I have had the pleasure of seeing his 
stock once or twice, and can assure “A Lover 
of Good Ham” that there are'animals among 
them whose hams, if we may judge from their 
beautiful proportions, would tempt his appetite 
even if he was unusually fastideous. But as 
he may want proof, I will give the reasons why 
I believe them to be the pure blooded Berk- 
shires; First, they excel any hog I ever saw in 
beauty and symmetry of form, tractable dispo- 
sition, and eapability of fattening; second, they 
have all the marks attributed to the pure bloods 
by breeders both in this country and England; 
and thirdly, because several of them came from 
Berkshire county^ Englamd; and of those not im- 
ported, he has full and authenticated pedigrees, 
running back to the imported stock, from such 
men as C. N. Bement, A. B. Allen, and Messrs. 
A. &. G. Brentnall; men whose names are a 
sufficient guarantee for the truth of their state- 
ments. These facts I received from Col. Bon- 
ner himself, and I presume he will substantiate 
them if called upon. I have heard of other lots 
of Berkshires in this and one of the adjacent 
counties, but these I have seen, and I am fully 
convinced that if there are any pure blooded 
Berkshires in the United States these are. 
But I am making this communication longer 
than I intended. My design was simply to con- 
vince your correspondent that he was mistaken 
in the fact assumed, viz; that all the h..gs pur- 
porting to be Berkshires, in Georgia, were a 
mixed breed. By the way, Messrs. Editors, 
would you not be conferring a favor upon the 
farming community generally, if you would re- 
quest of Col. B. to give to the public, through 
the medium of your paper, the result of his ex- 
perience in rearing Berkshires; his manner of 
rearing, fattening them, &e.; their adaptedness 
to our climate; together with such other facts 
concerning them as maymake their merits more 
extensively appreciated? I am clearly of the 
opinion that all who will try them, (I mean the 
pure bloods,) will be convinced that it is not “a 
multicaulis speculation.” 
Traly yours, J. M. G. 
THE IMPROVED CULTURE OF COTTON. 
Messrs. Editors — In looking over the 2d No- 
of your very neat and most excellent Southern 
Cultivator, a few days since, I observed an ex- 
tract from a paper of mine, “upon the Improv- 
ed Culture of Cotton,” taken from the Albany 
Cultivator, of February last. At your permis- 
sion, gentlemen, I avail myself of the earliest 
leisure moment from the duties of my profes- 
sion, to correct a most erroneous impression, 
which I conceive that extract, in its present iso- 
lated position, is calculated to make upon the 
minds of your numerous readers. That ex- 
tract, embracing as it does simply the modus 
operand! of the system of culture by which my 
cotton was grown the last year, which, together 
with the caption — “ifow? to make a large Cotton 
Crop"' — placed this improvement, and my ob- 
ject in the time, labor and trouble sacrificed in 
its accomplishment, in rather a ridiculous light 
before the sober and reflecting planter. Such 
planters, and their influence is beginning to be 
felt in our country, are disposed to look upon 
and hail the appearance af the Southern Culti- 
vator, as the harbinger of better days than those 
of the multicaulis, mvUibolis, and fancy stock 
humbug, the pestiferous influence of which has 
swept over our land like an Egyptian blight- 
Such men are the patrons of light and know- 
ledge in agriculture, they reason from cause to 
eflect; give them the truth, the simple and 
whole truth, with all the conditions of any im- 
provement, and they act upon the impulse of a 
wise and proper reflection. Their primary ob- 
ject is improvement, their views are liberal, 
and their motives patriotic. Thus in the exer- 
cise of a purely unsophisticated judgment, in 
determining the merits of a great national agri- 
cultural improvement, however brilliant the 
success in the end accomplished. They coolly 
and dispassionately take up the premises, and 
if they discover there a deep laid and broad ba- 
sis, sufficiently immoveable to sustain the su- 
perstructure, though infinitely beyond the ken 
of even previous imagination, they will accord 
to it a most cordial approval. There is a pre- 
sumptive evidence, at least, which the mind of 
the honest and generous hearted planter recogni- 
zes in the fact, that science is the governing 
principle here, the improvements of which upon 
the destiny of man, within the last half century, 
have accomplished more than all the bruts force 
of the previous fifty centuries of the world’s 
age. 
Do not suppose me, gentlemen, ambitious to 
secure the precipitate credulity of a single plan- 
ter, in the advantages of this improvement; all 
that is asked for it is, an attentive and patient 
hearing and a fair trial: to such planter rew-ard 
is certain, and to such only. In collecting and 
grouping together these leading principles in the 
science of agriculture, so prominently and ad- 
mirably held forth by Davy, Liebig, and the 
Cultivator, (Albany,) and in adjusting them to 
the economy and great ability of the cotton 
plant, let me assure you, gentlemen, I have bee^ 
actuated by a higher and a holier motive than 
the sordid object, in the abstract, of “a large 
cotton crop!” I'his is certainly the result, and, 
in part, the planter’s reward, which, however, I 
have ever regarded as the least interesting fea- 
ture of the improvement. In its proper place, in 
my first paper, you may observe, that my object 
in these experiments has not been to augment 
the crop of cotton, either per hand or per the 
aggregate, already too great, but by an entirely 
new and improved system of culture, predicated 
upon the principles of a scientific and enlight- 
ened policy, to curtail the immense capital en- 
gaged, under the destructive system of the coun- 
try, in its production, to one-third its present 
enormity. If 1 shall succeed in demonstrating 
this fact, my determined object, which my ex- 
periments the past season have more than rea- 
lised, I shall have accomplished yet another 
step in this interesting improvement, and that 
not the most important. 
Again, gentlemen, you will not fail to observe, 
nor will the merest tyro in the profession of ag- 
riculture, that the land thus treated, (as per de- 
tailed) after yielding the handsome reward to 
the industry, care and perseverance of the plan- 
ter, of some 3000 to 5000 pounds of a superior 
staple per acre, will be improved by the opera- 
tion in the ratio of some two or three hundred 
per cent upon its natural state. The soil thus 
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