46 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
purchased the first works of bis, have not read 
them through, and will suppose this to be a simi- 
lar work. But the form ol letters makes it in- 
deed “ familiar,” and it treats on “ familiar” 
subjects. M. W. Philips. 
Log HaUf Miss., December 21st, 1843. 
From the Albany Cultivator. 
LETTER FROM THOMAS AFFLECK, ESQ. 
We give below some extracts Irom a most in 
teresting communicatioH received from our 
friend, Mr. Affleck, of Ingleside, Miss. The 
extracts relate to topics ol interest at the north 
as well as the south, and will aid in throwing 
light on the productions and modes of culture in 
that lenile section of the Union. The doubts^ 
which have existed as to the capability of the 
south to produce its necessary provisions, or to 
grow the principal varieties of northern fruits, 
doubts which had arisen more from the neglect 
of the planter than any other cause, will soon be 
dissipated by the exami le of a few such men as 
are now engaged in enlightening that section of 
the United States as to its capability and true 
policy. 
Mr. Affleck has transmitted to us two speci- 
mens of cotton in the seed ; one a specimen of 
good Mexican, and 'he other a specimen of that 
shown by Dr. Lovelace, at the Adams County 
Fair, Miss., and supposed to be a hybrid be- 
twreen the Mexican and some long stapled cot- 
ton. Dr. L. not having completed his experi- 
ments, did not disclose the manner of its produc- 
tion, but we can say that a more beautiful speci- 
men ol cotton than the improved, has never met 
Gor eye, and shows most conclusively,, we think, 
what a field is open for the weil-into-rmed and 
scientific cultivator, in the improvement of this 
national staple. 
The following request of our friend, we place 
here, that it may meet the eye of Dr. Cloud : — 
“ Let me beg of you, as I do not know his ad,- 
dress, to say to Ur. Cloud, that if he wi.l for- 
ward me a bushel, or what he can spare, of his 
improved cotton seed, to the care of Ringgold, 
Ferridy & Co., New Orleans, he will confer on 
me a favor that I will gladly reciprocate.” The 
extracts relating to. sheep'„ pigs,, and growing 
corn lor fodder, will, we are sure, arrest the at- 
tention of the reader: 
^There is but one difficulty as to pastures, 
and that is, that none are made. No one at- 
tempts to form pastures in any other way than 
by turning out fields alter they will no longer 
produce cotton or corn, and being satisfied with 
the scanty crops of sedge and Natchez grass, and 
of briars which they may yet be able to support 
Within the last year or two, however, better 
thingsare attempted. I have seen very promis- 
ing woodland pastures ol orchard grass; and 
winter pastures of Egyptian oats and rye are be- 
coming common on, well managed plantations. 
The cane swamps afford tolerable grazing ; at 
all events, the swamp cattle manage to grow 
and even fatten on the abundant browsing they 
find there, and make pretty good beef and capital 
work oxen. Th$se> are the ra nos- horned, brick- 
colored cattle, known as Ipiney woods, swamn, 
Opelousas, or Attakapas cattle— desceodanis of 
the original Spanish stock, and yet found iu 
those regions, uninjured and unimproved. Du- 
ring the winter, we have no lack of abundance 
offeed for all kinds of stock; and in summer we 
have only to have recourse to Bermuda gras', to 
keep every thing seal fat. This is the most nu- 
tritious grass I have ever seen ; and where ex- 
posed, the most closely grazed, ft resembles 
!^imbiewiH, (Triticum repens'?) but is more 
delicate in its appearance, leaves much more 
aumero.us an,d narrower, stenos small an,d solid, 
gro.wth rapid; and when in meadow, itdoeanot 
attain a height of over 12 or 14 inches. Yet I 
have seen this delicate looking grass afford, at 
a second cutting, between 5 and 6 tons to the 
acre of dried hay. The first and third cuttings 
not so good. It stands soi thick on the ground, 
and its numerous lateral leaves so closely inter- 
locked, that a good hand cannot cut oyer more 
than half an acre per day, and has to cast aside 
the swarth with his foot, at every second or 
third cut; the scythe blade passing under and 
cutting the grass, without laying it over. It is 
a troublesome grass in the cotton field, but can 
be got under by a crop of corn and pumpkins, or 
oats followed by peas ; it can bear little or no 
shade. It is invaluable for coating embank- 
ments, and is of incalculable benefit on the le- 
vees of the Mississippi. It is stated upon good 
authority, lobe ‘theDoul grass of the middle 
provinces of Hindostan.^ Whoever brought it 
to this country, is as deserving of a monument 
to his memory, here in the South, as is Parmen- 
tier in France. 
“Within some three or four years, another 
creeping grass has made Its appearance here, 
said to be a native of and abundant in Cuba, 
and is rapidly spreading; that suits their Up- 
land, and thrives better there than Bermuda, and 
is green and grows all winter, whilst the other 
is cut down by the first frost. I am now using 
it in my garden and grounds for edgings, grass 
plats, &c , and think it will answer well, as be- 
ing easily kept within bounds, of a dwarfish 
growth, forming a close sod, and remaining 
green summer and winter. From the reports of 
Dr. Phillips and others, it would appear that in 
the Musketo, a Texian grass, we have another 
valuable resource, particularly for wit. ter pas- 
ture. Dr. P. presented me with a small quanti- 
ty ol seed, which is in the ground. 
“ You see how I ramble along! I will now 
return to my forgotten lext. Sheep in the South ! 
You are right, — ‘the old notion ol the impossi- 
bility of growing good wool at the South, is giv- 
ing way to the evidence of facts.’ The doctrine 
that affi wool-bearing animals except the negro, 
have their wool, in a very short time, turned in- 
to hair in the South, is also exploded. True, 
the common sheep of the country, bred in and in 
for generations, and ranging now in miserable 
burnt up pastures, and again in the cotton fields, 
where they become excessively fat on the tender 
winter grass ; the one season shorn, and the next 
allowed to surrender their coats to the briars — 
such sheep have thin, scanty, hairy fleeces. But 
they form no criterion. Are there no such ani- 
mals elsewhere, bred by, and the property of 
nobody in partreufar, the United States over'?’ 
Why IS the coat of the black-faced sheep of the 
mountains of Scotland, so coarse and hairy, 
whilst that of the Merino of Spain aad of New 
South Wales, where they scarcely ever see frost, 
so fine ifi its staple 1 I feel satisfied of one 
thing, that the ffni r and more spiral ihe staple, 
and the closer and heavier the coat of wool, and 
the greater the abundance of yolk, the better will 
the wool on the sheep’s back resist the injurious 
effects of the son. Sheep are kept by the plan- 
ter, in almost every instance, for the mutton 
alone ; some few manufacture the scanty crop 
of wool. The mutton is very fine, almost equal 
to that of the mountain heather-fed sheep of my 
native country — and that, you know, is a great 
deal tor a Scotchman to say 1 The native sheep 
of which I speak, are remarkably full and broad 
in the foin, and the saddle is of course propor- 
tionablygood Sheep seem to me always to be 
in good health here — one never hears of the half 
of a large flock dying ofl wifhin a few days, as 
is by no means unusual in colder countries, 
where numbers have to be penned together for 
a considerable length of lime. 
“ We have thus, you perceive, no scarcity of 
beef and mutton Many planters in Mississip- 
pi are now making their own pork, or are exert- 
ing themselves tq do so. In the neighboring 
County of Jefferson, this is more particularly 
the case. I know of several there, who last sea- 
son killed and cured from 100 to 200 head; one 
who killed 35.0, and another over 700 head, all 
for their own home consumption. The gentle- 
man last alluded to, assured me that all of his 
hogs were fattened entirely on peas, which were 
planted between the corn rows at the last tend- 
ing, and the hogs turned in on them after the 
corn is gathered ; finer bacon I have never eat- 
en. This gentleman has killed his own pork 
ever since the second year of his farming, some 
thirty years; tans his own leather, makes his 
own shoes, harness, &c., wagons and farming 
utensils; manufactures much of his winter clo- 
thing, and this without allowing himself to be 
influenced by the high or low prices of cotton ; 
though, of course, when cottofi brought from 19 
to 25 cents, he was, to all appearances, sinking 
money in employing his hands anywhere else 
but in the cotton field. However, thebest proof 
that his system was the true one, is that he is one 
of the wealthiest men in the country, living ia 
the greatest comfort, his family settled lound 
him, and his negroes comfortable and happy. 
A word mor.: on hogs. I find that the pigs 
brought here from the North, grow none after 
warm weather sets in ; and grown animals sufi 
fer much during the first summer ; whilst their 
E roduce, bred here, grotv and thrive well. I 
ave imported Newberry here, and a fine lot of 
thorough-bred sows, from which I am raising 
my plantation stock — will they do 1 
“ You speak of being 'anxious that some of 
your sonthern friends would try the experiment 
of sowing corn broadcast, as an article of food 
for animals, to be used for soiling during the 
summer, and cured and fed, alter being cut, to 
them in the winter ; and ascertain what the 
practicability and expense of keeping animala 
in this way would be.’ Corn leaves, you are 
aware, are now used extensively j but would 
not the stalk, cured and cut into chafiT, add much 
to the ability of the planter to feed stock, with- 
out materially adding to his expense '? It would, 
and in my own case, does do so. At ‘Ingle- 
side,’ I feed nothing else. My farm here only 
consists of 40 acres of an old field, which the 
small force I keep here enables me to improve 
very slowly ; the more,- as to it is added fi;ve 
acres of garden, &c., requiring much manure. 
As 1 keep five head ol horses, two mules, two 
yoke ol cattle, from two to six cows and their 
calves, and some twenty to thirty head ol hogs, 
I was forced to try some such means of making 
fodder, or have blades to haul from one of the 
plantations. In 1842, I sowed some corn broad- 
cast, but the dryness of the season and the pov- 
erty of the land, prevented it doing much. 1 did 
not eut it; but the stock, when turned into the 
field, grazed on that patch of corn as long as 
there was a stump of it left. That winter I fed 
principally on crab grass hay, and corn cut and 
si ucked Kentucky fashioB — whieh does not dc> 
well. This last season I drilled several difier- 
ent patches of corn atdiflerent times during the 
spring and summer ;. drills from 2^ to 3 feet 
apart, and the stalks almost touching in the drill. 
It all did well; so well that though I had not 
more than an acre and a half in all, I fed mjr 
Slock on it during the whole summer, passing 
the green corn through the c utting-box, with a 
proportion of about one-third or one-fourth of 
dry fodder ; cutting down and curing what was 
left of each patch, when the next sown became 
ripe enough to feed out. I have thus suffleieat 
fodder to do me, I think, or nearly so, until oats 
are ripe, and my drilled corn comes in again. It 
must be in tassel, or tassel ing, before horses and 
cattle at all relish it ; and hogs, though they eat 
it greedily, fall off on it ; for the reason, I think, 
that they reject afl but the juice, and hang rotund 
the fence all day, waiting lor more. I have 
tried Egyptian millet and Guinea corn, but pre- 
fer the maize. 
“ Pulling corn blades to make fodder, I con- 
sider the most unhealthy and HBprofitabk work 
. done on the plantation.” 
Currying Cows. — Cows should be curried 
as often as horses, particularly when they are 
shedding their hairs. Independent ol other con- 
sequences, it tends to prevent them from licking 
themselves, by which they often swallow the 
hair and receive injury. 
To PREVENT THE BLEEDING OF VINES. If a 
piece of moistened bladder be folded over the end 
of the vine which is cut, and then, bound tightly 
around with wrapping thread, it will effectually 
prevent bleeding. 
