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2 who shall effect this purification will de serve well of his or their generation. The alloy must be in some way extracted,, the pare gold will remain to be added | to the musses of the intelligent whose every issue, in agriculture and its kin dred* vocations will be free from every species of humbug, error or counter l'eitism. Shame on all such as “close their ears and shut their eyes to all knowledge”—verbal, written, experi mental, scientific, historical, natural! Miserable abortions! cast in the moulds of nature, in form, like men, yet not “in the image of God" and blighting and cursing by their labors, themselves, their families and friends, by their wil full and blind opposition to truth, in theory (of which they have but little) and jlractice. No truth in political economy is bet ter established than that supply and dematul regulate prices.” It is universal in its application, without exception. It is fixed and irrevocable. An excess in the supply of cotton will bring down the price. That excess has been reach ed. Let us not be guilty of the folly of attributing it to the late war. Cot ton has declined everywhere just at the moment of making peace. Four mil lions of Southern cotton bales have done the mischief, not war. That has affected us but little, but the excess in the supply of cotton has well nigh ruined us. It will require years, per haps, to remedy the evil, not because it is remedyless but because we have not the wisdom to apply the remedy until co ui|idled to do so by that sternest of all laws—the law of necessity or of compulsion—or, what is of the same significance, by the want of means to produce the cotton. And another year of disaster and loss, will bring about that dreadful result, to thousands more of our people who have already been engnlphed in the maelstrom of min who ventured their crazy barks in its current without capital or experi ence. We alone are responsible, dis guise the fact as we may, for the pecu niary evils which afflict us, think as we may of wars—money rings, cotton rings,, commercial fertilizers, banks, -swtsrms, labor, anything or everything, conceivable or otherwise, possible or impossible. Too much cotton last year, like Adam’s first sin, “brought all our woes" on us—better have made 100 little with an abundant supply of food. And this ought to be the rule of every cotton planter this year. It is founded in common sense. Will it be? _ For tbo Burner of the South and Planters' Journal. Stock in the South. [ooNTlNlr.ll.] Before leaving the subject of dairy ing, let us make a comparison between a farm cultivated in cotton and corn and one cultivated for dairy purposes, connected with breeding mules. (The following calculations are not claimed to be minute, but accurate enough to ascertain our points.) A farm of -400 acres, in cotton and corn: 200 acres cotton ® ) bale (500 It. bale) equal to 100 bales @ SOO $ (1,000 200 arres corn (S) 25 bushels, equal to 5,008 bushels ® $1 5,000 Hr pen »es — $ 11,000 16 mules <® 80 lmsbels corn, equal to 1,280 bushels @sl.. .*1,280 One-tliird cotton for hands, equal to iiSi bales <© $00.... 2,000 One-lialf coni, equal to 2,500 bushels @ $1 2.500 $ 5,780 $ 5,220 20 tons fertilizers @ SOO 1,200 Net $ 4,020 Four hundred acres, mixed husband ry, five fields of eighty acres: 1 tield, 40 acres cotton @ ) bale, equal to 20 bales <S»> .SOO $ 1,200 1 tield, 40 acres wheat @ 20 bushels, equal to 800 bushels <® $1.50 1,200 2 fields, 80 acres corn @ 25 bushels, equal to 800 Im. (te $1; 3 fields. 80 acres oats <S) 20 bu., equal to 1,000 (® 75c.; 80 acres peas® 10 bu., equal to 800 bu. <S> $1; 4 fields, 80 acres clover® 1 ton per acre, equal to 80 tons (® S2O; 5 fields, 80 acres clover ® 2 tons per acre, equal to Kit) tons (® #2O- -all fed to stock, 100 cows, at #BO (S4O less than my average) 8,000 $10,400 12 mules, two year olds, ® $12,5 1,500 H.rp, uses - $11,9(H) 12 hands ® S3OO 3,000 .*8.300 BANNER OF THE SOUTH aNI) PLANTERS’JOURNAL. Besides this increase of 100 ]>er cent, over the cotton farm, manure of the stock will manure 100 acres annually with a full coat, or two hundred acres with a half coat On the cotton farm you have to work sixteen rnuies and thirty hands (which will hardly pick the cotton crop out); on the dairy farm you only require twelve mares and twelve hands. Your advances to your hands on the cotton farm will ex ceed advances on the dairy farm 200 per centum. You invest on the cotton farm #7OO more in stock, which annu ally decreases in value; and lastly, but not least, it is easier to get twelve good bands than thirty. Your team on the dairy farm can be kept with fifty bush els of corn, or its equivalent, there being plenty of pastime or soiling food, whereas it requires at least 80 bushels of corn per head on the cotton farm. These statements prove that dairying pays better than cotton, under average circumstances. • Next let us proceed to sec if it will pay to raise stock for side. Suppose we take the same 400 acre farm and stock it with 30 milch cows, 30 calves, 30 yearlings, 30 two year olds, 80 three year olds, and 30 four year olds—total, 130 head. Os this stock, 30 calves, 30 yearlings, and 30 two year olds would consume as much as 30 cows, reducing the stock to the same as !)0 head of cows; but allowing the four year olds one-third heavier feed than the cows, the stock would be equal to 100 cows. The produce would be: Profits on 80 cows, deducting $8.55 for the milk each calf receives...s2,l43 50 Cotton and wheat 2,400 00 30 four year old steers and heifers <S> 1,000 m. equal to 30,000 1,800 00 12 two year old mules® $125 1,500 00 $7,843 50 j Krpenses — Labor 3,000 00 Net $4,213 50 From the Plantation. High Farming Without Manure. This is the caption of an article in the February number of that very ex cellent agricultural monthly, the Jtural Carolinian , and which bears the signature of Dr. E. M. Pendleton, of Sparta, Georgia. Its design, as stated by the author, is to notice a few points that are unphilosophical and imprac ticable in tiie theory of high culture with chemical manures, advocated by Professor George Ville, in certain lectures delivered at the royal experi mental farm at Vincennes, France, instituted under the patronage at the expense of the French Emperor. The strictures of Dr. P. can but be con sidered by the writer as impolitic and unjust; impolitic, in as far as they tend to discourage investigation and experiment in new channels; unjust to i the author, because his premises are not fully presented, while his conclu sions are perverted and distorted. These lectures were delivered by M. Ville after at least six years of suc cessful practice, from 1861 to 1867, with the ample means afforded by the French treasury, and the stimulus af forded by the immediate supervision of the Emperor, and the eager scrutiny of intelligent, practical agriculturists. !No theory of culture was advanced before it had been fully verified in I successful and remunerative practice. | To these and many other carefully i conducted experiments, during six ! years of lavish expenditure, with the grand results obtained, Dr. P. op poses bis own experiments for one or two years in “rows of cotton, seventy yards long!" Truly, there is but a step from the sublime to the ridicu lous ! Hrobdignag and Liliput are here brought into contiguity unknown even to the geography of the regions of the imagination! Dr. I*. supposes the inductions of M. Ville may apply as far as French soils are concerned, but asks, “How of soils already surfeited with lime, as in the cretaceous soils of lower Georgia, and the limestone lands of Virginia and Kentucky? Will it pay to apply lime to these lands? Or how of the feldspathic and micaceous soils of middle Georgia and Carolina? Can ■ we afford to purchase potash as a fer-! tilizer at the presenthigh rates, to apply i to soils which have enough for a thou-! sand years cropping?’ Dr. P., as a chemist, must be aware that the potash ; o! the last named soils can lie made ; available only in the laboratory of the i chemist, with the powerful re-agents at his command; and that the minerals; containing it are but sparingly soluble ! by agents we can introduce into the soil; and if his experiments had ex tended so far, lie would have discover-j ed that no fertilizer pays better, in; pnqiortion to its cost, than wood ashes applied to these same micaceous j and feldspathic soils. So in case of the former soils lie would have learned that, an application of lime and its' sulphate yield the best returns in those ; same limestone soils of Virginia and Kentucky, even where the blue car-' lionate of lime is found in strata with in a few inches of the surface. And why? Because, by percolation and leaching, the soluble lime has been removed, and the remaining limestone is practically insoluble, even in that form of it called rotten limestone, and 1 therefore, cannot aid in vegetable j nutrition, or in the decomposition of other constituents of the soil except by calcination. In support of the former proposi tion may be cited the results of ex . pertinents made by the State Agricnl- j tural College of the State of Miclii- i gan. If the soils of Georgia arcs new, compared to those of France, and not, > therefore, exhausted of mineral in gredients, he must admit that the soils of Michigan are less exhausted; hav ing been the home of the roving In dian for a long period after Georgia and the Carolines had become States of the Union. In these experiments,! the following result was obtained as it; regards potash. Land manured with wood ashes at the rate of five bushels per acre, produced an increase of the j hay crop over that of the natural soil of 4,165 pounds of cured hay per; acre during three years cropping, lie fore the potash wagjgdiausted. A fer tilizer that produce! this result in clcrrcr and Timothy grass would have had a similar effect upon other crops suited to the climate, but no i other crop was embraced in these ex periments. Dr. I*. arrives at the conclusion that "it is not lime, potash and soda that we need to keep up the fertility of our soils, but nitrogen, phosphoric acid and bum us. Now, this is not represent ing M. Ville's sytem in its true light. He does not place lime and potash in the first rank as a tertilizer for general crops, but as necessary and secondary to nitrogen and phosphoric acid ; nor 1 does he employ soda at all but as af fording nitrogen in the cheap and es-1 fective form of nitrate, and affirms dis- i tinetly the soda is contained in ample ! supply in all soils. But how of thi t humus ! Ilow are we to obtain it in : the soil by any theory of culture ever : presented by Dr. P. ? The exhaustive j cultivation of the soil with crops ofj cotton and com will not create, but rather diminish it, even with the aid of “Atnmoniated Phosphates” and -‘Guano : Compounds.” And if obtained by a ! proper course of rotation of crops! designed for that purpose* what is its important agency in the soil to entitle it to a place in the same sentence with nitrogen and the phosphates? That by its decomposition it affords carbonic | acid to act powerfully upon the other ingredients in the soil, there can be no' doubt; but the atmosphere is a fruitful and ready source of this acid to plants, and, therefore, humus is almost super ; riuous for that end. That it performs a mechanical office in giving mellow ness and porosity to the soil, cannot be questioned ; but beyond this, whether it aids in vegetable nutrition is a ques tion not yet decided in the traditions of the past or the lights of the present, to give it precedence of potash and lime, which we know enter directly into' the cellular structure of the plant. To quote again from Dr. I*. : “M. George Ville is decidedly behind the times, when he expects to instruct the j agriculturists of this country in the application of his complete manure,” etc. Now, this is hypercriticism ex-j emplified. Ilis lectures were not de livered to or for us, nor have they, as far as the writer is informed, been ' translated into our language, except j for the columns of The Plantation. That his system does not apply to our soils would not be asserted except by one interested in frowning upon all en terprise in culture other than by the use of compounded fertilizers held at high rates in the market, yielding fabulous returns to the manipulators. 1 his is well illustrated by the price ex acted by those operating our bone mills, who demand three and half cents per pound for flour of bone, while they jiay one cent jier pound for the dry bones. A better era is about to dawn for our practical farmers, when, with the intelligence gained by such teach ings as those of M. Ville, they can compound their fertilizers on the farm from simple, and comparatively in expensive substances which are not likely to be beyond our reach. At our coal mines the coke-kilns can be made to yield ammonia in abundance ; the competition in the production of the Charleston phosphates will soon re duce that native fertilizer to a mode rate price ; the mineral salts of potash can even now fie procured at a low rate as imported by the cargo from the mines of Stassturt, in Prussia, and of Austrian Galicia ; and sulphate of lime (land plaster) abounds in many locali ties in the States North and South. Let the demand become large, and all these piolucts wi 1 be hand el at the small profit now realized on our com mon salt. That M. \ iile employed these ele ments of a gooil fertilizer extravagant ly under the circumstances of bis mis sion, is no greater reason that we should do so than that we should follow the example of those who have applied Peruvian guano at the rate of a thou and pounds per acre. We can adopt the synthetic method, addding these ingredients in small quantities, and increasing or diminishing propor tions as success or failure may indi cate ; thus learning step by step, until we have gained philosophy in the school of experience. We can thus be independent of the Chincha Islands, and all other guano deposits; and ; liettcr still, we can spurn the offers of those who would benevolently "com pound for us at a profit of fifty to a hundred per cent, while they conceal i the constituents of what they sell us. If we can gain wisdom in the practice jof the art which supports all other arts and enterprises, let us scorn to make merchandise of our wisdom to amass fortunes out of our neighbors; I but, emulating the example of that I noble and ever generous benefactor of the Southern planter, David Dickson, when we have gained important re ! suits, let our neighbors reap, unbought, the benefit of our acquisitions. All ; honor, in all time, to David Dickson ! A. C. Van Errs. Near Atlanta, Feb. 10, 1870. The Fig—One of our Neglected Resources. P. J. Ukrckmvnu ia Rural CiroiinUn. TIIK CERTAINTY AND VALUE OF THE FIC. CROP. Among tlit* many varieties of fruits adapted to our Southern zone, the Fig has not received all the attention it de serves, viewing it for commercial pur poses. True, few gardens throughout the country are without a fig tree, but beyond supplying the table with the fruit in a tresh state, no use is made of it. No attempt seems to have been made to grow it on a large scale, for the purpose of drying the fruit and bringing it in competition with the im ported article. The most favorable conditions for its successful culture are happily combined in a suitable climate and soil, especially on the sea coast of all the Southern States, where the fig tree attains great size, produces never-failing large crops, and is entirely free from disease. No fruit requires less culture; skillful prun ing is not needed, and where the tree receives a supply of nourishment, it is sure to return its value in a most abund ant harvest of wholesome fruit. I'ISKIWKINC. THE Flo FOK MAIIKET. Os the process of preparing the Fig for market, less is perhaps practically known here, than of any other kind of fruit extensively cultivated. This cir cumstance certainly does not arise from the climate being iil adapted to its cul- ture, but no doubt from the same cause that keeps our agriculture in a state of routine instead of progress and im provement. We have seen some very good speci mens of dried figs produced here, and what has been done can lie done again. If the culture of the fig were under taken for the purpose of drying the fruit, it would result in a source of large and regular income to the fanner. There may be a part'-d failure of the peach and apple crops.but the fig never fails where it is not winter killed. HOW TO IIRV FIOS. The following method was quite suc cessful with ourselves, and although the article produced was not equal in ap pearance to the large imported Smyrna tigs, the qfcalitv was very satisfactory. Gather the figs when the skin begins to crack, (which is a sign of maturity and then the fruit contains the largest amount of sacharine matter); make a strong lye of oak ashes, or take com mon cooking sodadissolved in hot water; quickly dip the figs in the hot liquid and remove immediately; expose to the a s for a minute or two, and repeat the dipping. If the lye is hot and strong enough, the color of the fig will imme diately change, the dark varieties to a bright green, and the pale colored to a light green. Place the figs upon trays made of wooden slats and expose to the sun, taking care not to allow the dew to fall upon them. Alter a few days they are ready to lie put away in small woodqn boxes, first putting a layer of spice, laurel or bay leaves at the bottom and another on the top. Put the lid on tight to keep insects out. Figs placed in a dry room, will keep a long time. If a brick oven is convenient, it will greatly facilitate the drying process, care however must be taken not to give too much beat. So soon as the figs show signs of secreting syrup, they have been put under too high a degree of beat and they will thus make an inferior article. Frequent turning of the fruit is necessary, and after the second day, it is advisable to lightly presfl the trait with the hand s6 as to flatten it. The light colored varieties are pre ferred for drying, although some of the brown skinned kinds, especially the brown Turkey, make a very good article. THF. no AS A riCKI.E. The fig can be made useful in many , other forms, such as pickling, presen - ting and making jellies. Asa pickle it Icertainly surpasses the cucumber, of | which an immense amount, in a pickled form, is annually imported South, and no doubt a large demand would arise i for it, was the article put upon the mar j ket and made known. I To pickle, pick the fruit with the stems. The iigs must be matured, but not too soft. Put the fruit in a vessel; ; sprinkle with salt in the proportion of ; one half pound to each peek of fruit; i pour boiling water upon the whole and 1 let stand twelve hours ; afterwards, put the fruit in a colander, and if too salt 1 rinse with cold water. Fill the jars i with the fruit; take strong vinegar, i add a quarter of a pound of sugar to each quart ; boil and pour the hot vine gar upon the fruit. In filling the jars with the fruit, some cinnamon bark and i cloves should be mixed through it. VARIETIES OF THE Fid. I The nomenclature of the fig issome i what confused, and some difficulty ex ! ists in attaining a correct list of syno nyms. The following varieties we have found the most desirable : Black Genoa. —Size, medium ; long, tapering near the stem ; skin, dark | purple, covered with bloom; pulp, j bright red; very good. Black Ischia. —Medium size; round; skin, dark purple, nearly black at ma turity; pulp, dee]i red; very prolific j and excellent. Jlrenrn Turkey., —(Synonyms, Lee’s perpetual, Brown Italian, Jerusalem, Murray, Howick, Walton, Common Purple, Brown Naples, Large Sugar Fig. etc., etc.) From its numerous synonyms, it shows its great populari ty. Fruit, medium, oblong pyriform ; skin, dark brown: pulp, red, very sweet and excellent. This is, unques . tionably, the most prolific variety for this section, it produces very large and regular crops and is well adapted for drying.