Deer Bones—Improved Culture of Cotton. 
gation, which sickness, misfortunes, or un¬ 
looked for changes, may place it out of his 
power to meet; subjecting his other proper¬ 
ty to the risk of loss for the payment of this, 
and perhaps leaving him, after all is gone, a 
prey to remediless anxiety and care. 
SAVE YOUR DEER BONES. 
We were in a shoe shop a day or two 
since, and noticed a large, gracefully-shaped 
bone, as clear, smooth, and dense almost as 
ivory, which was used for wedging out shoes 
■when on the last; on inquiring we found it 
was from the lower hind leg-bone of a deer. 
This is split from the pastern joint, which 
forms the knob or handle, as far up as re¬ 
quired towards the gambril joint, and the up¬ 
per end is dressed down, and this small arti¬ 
cle made in an hour, from what is usually 
thrown away as useless, is worth from 25 to 
50 cents, and as each leg furnishes two, the 
hind legs of a deer are worth from 1 to $2 
eash. We believe all the leg bones are valu¬ 
able, though perhaps not equally so. The 
horns are always in demand. The aggregate 
of such savings may add thousands to the 
wealth of the country, and greatly to its 
comforts. 
Improved Culture of Cotton. 
Under this head Dr. N. B. Cloud of Ala¬ 
bama, is writing a series of articles for the 
Albany Cultivator, detailing what he terms 
an improved system of cultivating cotton. 
By this he says he obtained a crop of 5,989 
lbs. to the acre, and thinks it possible he may 
be able eventually to double even this enor¬ 
mous yield. His system may be stated in a 
few words. 
1 st. To let the land lie in fallow the year 
previous to planting. 
2. To manure as highly as four to five 
hundred bushels of rich compost to the acre, 
and this manure he contends may be made 
upon every plantation, at a cost of not over 
two cents per bushel, by keeping stock and 
saving all litter, and mixing with it plenty of 
muck or marl, according to the most ap¬ 
proved Northern methods. 
3d. In preparing his land, he first runs off 
his rows with a scooter plow three feet apart, 
and then cross-plows these five feet apart 
with a shovel plow, planting the seed at eve¬ 
ry cross of the furrows, and thus gets 2,940 
hills on each acre. 
4th. He uses improved seed, which previ¬ 
ous to planting, he rolls in leeched ashes or 
sand, or in a compound of two parts of ashes 
to one of common salt, made moist with wa¬ 
ter, and then drops eight to ten in each hill, 
and covers with a light hoe. 
5th. Soon after coming up he runs scooter 
and shovel plow r s down the rows. The hoe 
hands subsequently follow and thin out the 
cotton to two good stalks in each hill. By 
this method bar-shearing, scraping, and chop¬ 
ping out are saved, and the after culture is 
done by a kind of horse-hoe called a sw r eep. 
Fig. 39. 
sK 
This instrument is thus described :— 
“ It is easily made by any blacksmith, by laying the 
wings a b and a c upon the point of a scooter d in the 
form of an isoseles triangle, which is fastened upon the 
chip of a shovel plow stock, by a heel pin, in the same 
manner you would a shovel. From the tip of the wing 
b to that of c, it should be 2 feet, forming a kind of 
horse-hoe , by which a row is swept out at three furrows. 
This should be so curved and graduated upon the stock 
as not to go into the soil deeper than 1 inch, and as 
much less as possible, to enable it to cut the young 
grass and weeds that may be springingup. The great 
and singular advantages of the sweep over all instru¬ 
ments of the plow, harrow, or hoe kind that I have ever 
used, are these—that it will kill a greater quantity of 
grass and weeds in a given time, and do less injury to 
the surface roots of the plant, so essential to its progress¬ 
ive prosperity. The hoe hands following this instru¬ 
ment, thin the cotton to a stand, one stalk in a place, 
and draw up a small quantity of soil to the standing 
plant. 5 ’ 
We are unable to speak as to the probabi¬ 
lity of obtaining as large crops as Dr. Cloud’s 
on the average of soils in Alabama, although 
from the description he gives of his land— 
“ forked leaf, black-jack, pine barren, a deep, 
porous, sandy superstratum, lying upon a 
tolerably good clay, at a distance of 2 to 3 
feet below 7 the surface one might infer that 
it w r as anything but rich. We can only add, 
that instead of a naked fallow, we should 
prefer a rotation of two years in grass with 
stock to feed it off; and then one or two 
years as the land w r ould bear it, of cotton 
cropping. Sheep would be the best and most 
profitable stock for the southern planters. 
We calculate here that the increase of the 
flock nearly pays all expenses, so that the 
w 7 ool is clear gain, after deducting the inte¬ 
rest on first cost of the animals. What then 
would be the profit of growing wool at the 
south, where the animals will get a good liv¬ 
ing in the open fields throughout the yearl 
Choice Merino w 7 ool clean washed is now 
worth in this market 30 cents per lb., could 
it not be produced at the south for 15 cents'? 
