IMPROVEMENT OF WOOL IN SOUTHERN LATITUDES.—POUDRETTE AS A MANURE FOR FALL CROPS. 153 
to collect it in efficient quantity. I have thought 
of this difficulty, and believe it may be overcome 
by a little perseverance. There is a small shed 
behind the city hall, where many thousands of 
gallons might be annually collected. Let some 
farmer get the privilege from the corporation, of 
putting down a large receiver there under ground, 
filling it half full of fine charcoal, so as to take off 
the powerful effluvia—now so offensive—on con- 
iition of its being emptied twice a year, spring 
and fall. Let the same system be pursued at all 
the large eating houses and taverns. Instead of 
such places being as now, injurious to the health 
of the neighborhood, they would become perfectly 
sweet and innocuous. The difficulty would be 
greater in families; yet if it can be proved that 
those who inhabit houses can derive an annual 
income from attending to it, as well as take off all 
bad smells from every square in the city, I should 
presume the double inducement would make the 
system to be generally adopted. The greater por¬ 
tion of the urine of families is daily thrown into 
the privies. If every family would have theirs 
emptied once a year, and when emptied put into 
the vault two barrels of charcoal, and add one bar¬ 
rel of charcoal every month afterward, at the end 
of each year they would have about forty bushels 
of poudrette and urate, of a far better quality than 
any now sold, worth twenty-five cents per bushel 
to the person who may take it away, exclusive of 
the expense of removal. Thus every family might 
make a clear income of eight dollars per annum, 
beyond the cost of the charcoal, and keep the 
whole city free from the abominable, excremen- 
titious effluvium now so pernicious to the health, 
and so obnoxious to the olfactories of our citizens. 
It will be seen that carbon and oxygen form 
eight and a half parts in every ten of vegetable 
matter, and it is more than probable that carbonic 
gas supplies the whole of it. How amply has 
Infinite Wisdom provided for this immense de¬ 
mand ! Can the geologist measure the carbonate 
of lime and other carbonates laid up by Creative 
Wisdom in our globe ? Can the physiologist count 
the weight of carbonic gas daily exhaled by the 
animal creation ? Can the philosopher form a 
distant conception of the immense supply hourly 
liberated by the rapid and slow decomposition ever 
progressing on our earth’s surface ? If man has 
not the power to measure or count the supply, he 
has given to him the power to collect and apply it 
for his individual and general benefit. 
It was my intention to have explained, in this 
essay, the effect of lime in promoting vegetation 
when mixed in soils, as hinted when treating of 
its operation on saw-dust; but as this article is 
already too extended, I shall defer it to some 
future opportunity. 
Wm. Partridge. 
We have received the samples of wool of 
which Mr. Cockrill speaks. They are really very 
choice and fine, and would rank high in our mar¬ 
ket. An inspection of them would be evidence in 
favor of what he asserts, viz., that wool improves 
bv takinsr sheep from the north to the south; an 
opinion which we have always entertained since 
we knew anything of wool. The most intelligent 
buyers here, with whom we have conversed, also 
assert the same, and we do not know who at the 
north maintains the contrary opinion. Our able 
correspondent upon Sheep Husbandry, in his com¬ 
munication—No. 3, in July number—says, that 
five cents per lb. extra, is paid by an extensive 
wool-purchaser for that grown in the southwest¬ 
ern states, on account of its superior softness over 
that grown at the north. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
IMPROVEMENT OF WOOL IN SOUTHERN 
LATITUDES. 
Nashville, Tenn., 6th June, 1843. 
Dear Sir :—I send you herewith six samples 
of Saxon wool. No. 1 was grown by me, when I 
had my flock in Mississippi, latitude 32|°, which 
I have proved to be the very best wool-growing 
country that I have ever seen. I have carefully 
sampled sheep from the south, as far north as 
Boston, Massachusetts, of all the different bloods, 
and find the same breed producing far better wool 
in a southern than northern latitude. I have com¬ 
pared wool grown by me in latitude as above, 
with American, and many imported samples, and 
find that wool in the south is softer, finer in the 
fibre, and more beautiful. I now have my flock 
near Nashville, where they do not do as well as in 
the south. In the south they live almost all the 
year upon green food. 
You will find the samples sent you, soft, fine, 
and of the true length for the first quality of cloth, 
and, I think, not inferior to any you can procure. 
I would be pleased to hear how this wool is liked 
in the north, and what your northern people found 
their opinion upon, when they say the south can 
not grow fine wool. Spain and Australia are the 
most successful wool-growing countries. Spain, 
where the fine-woolled sheep originated, is an 
orange-growing region. Yours truly, 
Mark K. Cockrill. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
POUDRETTE AS A MANURE FOR FALL CROPS. 
Dear Sir :—The question has been often asked 
by farmers, whether poudrette is a good manure 
for fall crops ? whether it will answer for wheat? 
and if it will produce a crop of grass after wheat, 
or whether its fertilizing properties are absorbed 
by the first crop ? With your permission, I will 
give a few short extracts from letters received 
from practical farmers, who have used it on wheat, 
in comparison with other manures; and the best 
evidence I can possibly have of the estimation in 
which it is held by them, is in the fact, that they 
have purchased this year, and used it in larger 
quantities than any previous year. 
Mr. Lemuel Soper, of Huntington, L. L, says: 
“ I also used poudrette on wheat, at the rate of 
forty, sixty, and even seventy bushels to the acre. 
Where I used forty bushels to the acre, I got as 
good wheat as where I used forty wagon loads of 
