THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
131 
ed; they cannot assimilate more than the air 
contains. Now, if the quantity of their steins, 
leaves and branches, has been increased by the 
excess of food yielded by the soil at the com- 
mencement of their development, they will re- 
quire for the completion of their growth, and 
for the formation of their blossoms and fruits, 
more nourishment from the air than it can af- 
ford, and consequently they will not reach ma- 
turity. In many cases, the nourishment afFord- 
sdby the air under these circumstances, suffices 
only to complete the formation of the leaves and 
branches. The same result then ensues as 
when ornamental plants are transplanted from 
the pots in which they have grown, to larger 
ones, in which their roots are permitted to in- 
crease and multiply. All their nourishment is 
employed for the increase of their roots and 
leaves, they spring, as it is said, into an herb 
or weed, but do not blossom. When, on the 
contrary, we take away part of the branches, 
and of course their leaves with them, we thus 
prevent the development of new branches, an 
excess of nutriment is artificially procured for 
the tree.s, and is employed by them in the in- 
crease of the blossoms and enlargement of the 
fruit. It is to effect this purpose that vines are 
pruned.” 
In an alternation of crops, we ought likewise 
to look, with the occasional fallowing of our 
lands, as a source for their steady improvement. 
Bj’’ a system of fallow, the lands for a thousand 
years, as in the vicinity of Naples, have been 
kept in constant heart, whilst an annual change 
of plants from those with, and those without sur- 
face roots on the same land, has been found to 
produce no deterioration in the fertility of the 
soil, after years of uninterrupted culture. 
The same high authority to which I have just 
referred, (Professor Liebig,) says ; “ It has 
long since been found, by experience, that the 
growth of annual plants is rendered imperfect, 
and their crops of fruit or herbs less abundant, 
by cultivating them in successive years on the 
same soil, and that in spite of the loss of time, a 
greater quantity of grain is obtained when a 
field is allowed to lie uncultivated for a year. 
During this interval of rest, the soil in a great 
measure regains its original fertility. On the 
other hand it has been remarked, that a field 
which has become unfitted for a certain kind of 
plant, was not on that account unsuited for an- 
other, and upon this observation a system of 
agriculture has been gradually founded, the 
principal object of which is to obtain the great- 
est possible produce with the least expense oi 
manure. 
‘*Now it was deduced from all the foregoing 
facts, that plants require for their growth differ- 
ent constituents of soil, and it was very soon per- 
ceived that an alternation of the plants cultivat- 
ed, maintained the fertility of a soil quite as 
well as leaving it at rest or fallow. It was evi- 
dent, that all plants must give back to the soil 
in which they grow, different proportions of cer- 
Jain substances, which are capable of being used 
as food by a succeeding generation. But agri- 
culture has hitherto never sought aid from che- 
mical principles, based on the knowledge of 
those substances which plants extract from the 
eoil on which they grow, and of those restored 
to the soil by means of manure. The discove- 
ry of such principles will be the task of a future 
generation, for what can be expected from the 
present, which recoils with seeming distrust 
and aversion from all the means of assistance 
offered it by chemistry, and which does not un- 
derstand the art of making a rational applica- 
tion of chemical discoveries. A future genera- 
tion, however, will derive incalculable advan- 
tage from these means of help.” 
By this improved mode of culture, through 
the instrumentality of a system of manuring, 1 
believe, we may make one acre produce as 
much as two by the old denuded process, by 
which we take everything from the soil and re- 
turn nothing to it. The consequences to our 
operatives from this mode of cultivation, by 
which we give to one acre the productive ener- 
gies of two, are of inestimable consideration. 
Fir^t, one halt ol the horses and mules which 
we now use to go over an immense space of 
imperfectly cultivated soil, may be dispensed 
with, or used for the garden cultivation of a di- 
minished number of acres. Secondly, to our 
slaves how greatly will the burthen be lighten- 
ed, by tilling one half of the quantity of land, 
yet in the end having a harvest equallj' or per- 
haps even more abundant to gather I To say 
nothing of the increased facility of the harvest 
itself, by pulling two thousand pounds of seed 
cotton on one acre, instead of one. 
At the Bend, I have this year planted in the 
check, twelve hundred acres of cotton— six hun- 
dred 1 have manured, the other ffix are planted 
in the first rise of the swamp, in a rich alluvium 
of untouched fertility requiring at present no 
manure. Two hundred acres ol the former, on 
the second level of the swamp, are on a stiffclay 
flat. The cotton was planted in this field on 
the 1st of May. It did not receive a drop of rain 
until the 1st week in June. The consequence 
has been, that I have encountered incredible 
difficulty in obtaining a stand; some of the land 
was re-planted five times, and none less than 
three. It was not until the 10th of June, by un- 
remitted efforts, I at last succeeded in setting the 
crop in this field. I advert to this miscarriage 
for the purpose of indicating its remedy, to wit : 
of giving a deep winter close furrow plowing, 
to all the clay lands you design for the check 
culture, and harrowing them early in the spring 
before you check off, after they have been ren- 
dered friable by the wdnter rains and frost, and 
another spring plowing. I believe I might have 
thrown up and abandoned these two hundred 
acres, and still that at the first level ol the Bend, 
I will make more cotton, from present appear- 
ances, than my whole force can gather between 
the 15th of August and 15th of January, from 
manuring and adopting the check, and discard- 
ing the drill culture. On my first level, I have 
checked five feet by four, and on the second le- 
vel, four feet square. I believe, however, five 
feet by three in the most fertile soils, and four 
by three in those of less richness, will be the 
right distance. 
My corn on Cantey’s fraction, which I think 
the richest piece of high river bottom I have 
seen this side of the Brazos and Colorado, I 
have planted in squares of three feet, and thin- 
ned to a single stalk. It is the best eared corn 
on my place, and will average, if no disaster 
occurs, nearly two ears to the stalk. 
In noticing the check culture, I should be sin- 
gularly unmindful of the claims of an individu- 
al who has most successfully directed the public 
attention to it, if I did not pay a willing tribute 
to the intelligence and ability with which he has 
illustrated the philosophy on which it rests. 
You will understand, gentlemen, that I can al- 
lude to no one but Dr. Cloud, of Macon county, 
who, by his careful analysis and induction of 
facts, has done much, 1 believe, to diminish the 
labor and augmentthe product of the cotton crop 
of the United States. That his theory rests on 
the true philosophy of the plant, I entertain as 
little doubt, as I do that its introduction will 
mark a new era in the culture of our beneficent 
staple. You will permit me to remark, that this 
system of manuring and planting in the check, 
take off half the tax on our lands, by allow'ing 
us to fallow half, or enables us to double our 
product in provisions and stock, if desirable. 
Indeed, a system of steady and efficient manur- 
ing, combined with an alternation of our crops, 
and of fallowing the most exhausted of our 
soils, constitute the best recipe for renovating an 
old country, and preventing a new one from 
growing old. 
We ought to combine with this .system of 
restoration and re-production in our soils, a 
most careful selection of the most approved spe- 
cies of stock. It seems yet to be a point unde- 
cided, whether the Holderness, Ayrshire, Here- 
fordshire, Durham, or Devonshire breeds, are 
the best adapted to our climate, or whether any 
one of these stocks, engrafted on the common 
cattle of our country, would not be preferable 
to the unmixed foreign breed. Certainly, a 
cross ot the Berkshire or Woburn with ourcom- 
rnon hog, is more tlirilty than, the full-blooded 
breed ot either. The cattle of Alabama are so 
generally inferior, that we propose premiums 
not only for the best specimens of horned cattle, 
but likewise lor the best exhibition of any other 
domestic animal connected with the purposes of 
agriculture. Indeed, the economical husband- 
ry of weaving our own negro cloth, of raising 
our own mules, cannot toosoon claim our atten- 
tion, On all these essential points of farming, 
I have made a beginning at the Bend, by the in- 
troduction of the best imported stocks; I have 
four different species ol foreign cotton on which 
I am conducting a series ol experiments; and a 
patch of sugar-cane, the syrup of which 1 mean 
to get by a new process of manufacture. The 
result of these experiments I desire to diffuse 
throughout our country, and indeed throughout 
the country as far as their utility can extend. 
Fellow-citizens, we occupy a section of coun- 
try worthy of the application of those great prin- 
ciples of agricultural renovation, to which i 
have referred. For strange as it may appear, 
some parts of Alabama already, young as she 
is, begin to put on the wrinkles and furrows ofa 
premature old age, brought on her by the penu- 
rious barbarity ol a soil-killing culture. The 
line of latitude, wffiich cuts the very centre of the 
cotton cultivation of the new world, passes near 
the building in which w'e are now assembled. 
This beautiful plant bathes its blossoms in the 
beams ofa sun, which no where shines v.'ith a 
more genial warmth, for its growth, develop- 
ment and maturity, than with us. Our soil is 
blessed with an Egyptian fecundity, diffused by 
that noble river which marches by our doors in 
silent majesty to the ocean— giving us abroad 
valley surpassed by none, if equalled by any, 
east of “the great Father of the Western wa- 
ters.” With all its affluence of soil, we must re- 
collect, that our mother earth is as exacting as 
she is generous ; she gives, but requires us to 
pay. If we fail in our tributes to her, she will 
fail in her donations to us. No good planter 
should rest quietly in his bed, except under the 
conviction that the spot which God has given 
him to till, is growing better, rather than be- 
coming worse in his hands. This is a debt he 
owes to posterity, of much higher obligation 
than that which, by a Spanish aphorism, com- 
pels us to plant at least one tree before we die. 
If we should be destined to see our great sta- 
ple break down from over-production, or from 
any fanatic discriminations Great Britain may 
make in favor of what she calls, wdth abundant 
cant, free cotton, (as if she made one pound of 
cotton or sugar in India, but by a compulsory 
labor, in effect far more grievous than our own,) 
we still have left to us vast resources copious 
and untried. 
I believe, without indulging in visionary pro- 
jects in looking out for new staples, the experi- 
ments which have been made in Mississippi 
with hemp, justify the belief that we can equal 
the production of Kentucky in this great article 
of consumption ; whilst the recent success of 
Professor Mapes, in extracting the finest quali- 
ty of sugar from molasses, warrants likewise the 
belief, that a large profit may be realised at last 
by us, in the culture of the sugar cane, by the 
instrumentality of the evaporator which that 
gentleman has so successfully applied to the se- 
paration and chrystalization of the saccharine 
matter in molasses. We can make on our best 
lands, w'ith the same facility that we can corn, 
five hundreu gallons ol the richest syrup to the 
acre, which would be found to hold not less 
than three pounds of sugar to the gallon in solu- 
tion ; far richer and much more easy of granu- 
lation than the molasses. I think 1 hazard no- 
thing in saying, that if cotton should fall to five 
cents, that under the important discovery of this 
practical chemist, in five years all the alluvial 
lands on this river will be dedicated to the culti- 
vation of the cane. 
Madder is beginning likewise to attract the 
attention of the most intelligent of our agricul- 
turists, as a staple adapted to our soil and cli- 
