PRACTICAL PAPERS—IIEMP CULTURE. 
265 
leaves, stubble and shives, gathered mostly from the atmos¬ 
phere, greatly increase the fertility of the soil. Many fields in 
those states have been planted with hemp for twenty and thirty 
years, without any apparent diminution of the amount of yield. 
When the hemp is water rotted, or spread on the grass land 
to rot, the stubble and leaves may be turned under by the 
plow so early in the fall, that all will be well decomposed at 
the time of the next spring sowing; and the land will receive 
as much benefit as by turning under a green crop. The 
shives, divested of the attached lint, may be spread over the 
land in winter, while frozen, and will act as a valuable mulch 
for the new crop, sown on fall plowed land, like spring wheat, 
and then be turned under the next fall. The seed crop alone 
will require manure to keep up the soil. 
Why Hemp has Been Neglected. —An idea has pre¬ 
vailed, because hemp has been grown in the slave states, that, 
like cotton, it could only be grown by slave labor. Another 
equally prevalent idea is, that it requires the long, hot sum¬ 
mers of Kentucky, Southern Illinois and Missouri to perfect 
it. Nothing cau be farther from the truth. That region is 
too hot during the summer and fall. The true home of hemp, 
where the brightest, finest, and strongest lint can be produced 
is beyond the home of the negro. Countries with cold, snowy 
winters universally produce the improved qualities. In India 
the plant exudes the gum haschich , which destroys the lint. In 
the cool climates of northern Europe and Russia, on the con¬ 
trary, no gum exudes. Some gum exudes in the hottest and 
dryest seasons in Missouri. Wisconsin will be free from this 
evil. The plants are not subject to attacks of rust, or insects. 
France and Germany grow more pounds of hemp than flax 
for their linen manufactories of cloth, fine grades of cordage 
and twines. Hemp fibre is more tenacious than that of flax, 
and when water rotted is nearly as fine. Dr. Ure, in compar¬ 
ing the tenacity or strength of threads of a certain diameter, 
gives the following results: flax, 1,000; hemp, 1,390, silk, 
2,894. By Dr. Roxburgh’s comparison hemp is 105 and flax 
but 39. 
