are aware of the rapidity in cotton produc tion since the prostration of the war period. It is not generally known that the aggregate pro duct since 1865 exceeds that of a similiar period prior to 1861. If we include the crop of 1876, the exoess of its production in the period of twelve years, from 1865 to 1876 inclusive, is about 2,000,000 bales more than from 1849 to 1860, inclusive. Leaving out the large crop of 1876, similar Periods of elever years make a com parison also favoring the production of the later. The aggregate of the crop movement of the former is 36,169,117 bales, or , 15,869,176,615 pounds, averaging 3,288,101 bales per annum, or 1,442.652, 419 pounds. A similar statement for 1865 to 1875, inclusive, reads, 36,331,582 bales, or 15,939, 344,833 pounds, averaging 3,302,871 bales per annum, or 1,449,031,348 pounds. An average increase of nearly 15,000 per annum: The great crop of 1859 was but two per cent. larger than that of 1875. Three crops since the war are each larger than any prior to it, with the above single exception; these are in order of size, 1875, 1870, 1873. The crop of 1872 was larger than that of 1858, and every crop preceding the latter is sur passed by every crop of the seven past years, with one exception, 1871. This is a remarkable result, which is a surprise to planters themselves, and an indication of what can be accomplished This gives to Texas the largest proportion, of profit, or eleven mills per pound; Arkansas, nine; Tennessee, eight; the others two to five; the average slightly exceeding half a cent, beihg $2.60 per average bale; making the net profit to the cultivators $11,500,000 in round numbers, in an aggregate of about 205,000,000: This is within a fraction of six per cent. of the gross receipts and, if assumed to be substantially correct, is too small a margin for a good season. It illustrates the necessity of increased returns. How shall they be obtained? By increasing the yield and diminishing the cost of supplies. Both ends, are reached a single operation: the adoption of a restorative rotation, which involves animal production and green rr enuring, a cheap ening of fertilizers and supplies for man and beast, a partial protection of the soil from wash ing and waste, a large yield at a minimum cost, and increase of fertility instead of exhaustion. The seed of cotton yieldsia valuable oil and is now largely expressed for this purpose. The cake or residue, after pressing, is valuable as a manure. For a long time, in the South, the seed was used whole as manure Of late years, however, cotton seed oil has come to be a mer chantable article, and large quantities, are now 't yearly exported to the North for the oil it con tains. Large quantities •of oil are also beginning to be made in the South. With improved sys tems of cultivation and careful rotation there is no reason why this crop should be an exhausting one, and the experience of the last few years shows it not to be so, where an intelligent sys tem of cropping is practiced. The greatest
drawback to the profitable cultivation of cotton is really the insects injurious to the plant. , Of these the boll worm is one of the most destruc tive. Another is the necessity of diversified farming, and manure. Up n this question one of the reports of the Commissioner of Agriculture says. Every farmer should rely mainly upon his stock for manures; hogs should be fattened upon field-pease; and horses should be penned at night in deeply-littered yards. Accretions to be man ure pile may be made from a great, variety of sources, including all decaying vegetable and animal matter, waste and wash from the kitchen, muck from the swamps, and pine straw or leaves from the forest. There are many special fertil izers in the South ample for a perpetual supply of all possible drain upon the resources of the soil. The coast-line from Virginia to Texas, including all the sounds, inlets, bays, and estuaries, has an aggregate extent of thousands of miles, and every mile can furnish abundant stores of fish and sea weed for manuring adjacent fields. Oyster-shell lime is also plenty and cheap in the tidewater regions. No mineral manure is more abundant than marl, which is found in the whole tide water section of the Atlantic coast, in the Mississippi Valley and in Texas. It underlies wide belts at various depths, often very near the surface; it is, in many localities, easily obtained in large quantities; and its value, though vari able, is undoubted for application for soils needing lime. Gypsum can be obtained from native beds at no great distance from any locality in the South. Lime is abundant in the mountain valleys from Virginia to northern Alabama; and formations of Alabama and Mississippi are unsurpassed for fertility. All these home resources should be used in bringing . up the average cotton yield from one hundred and ninety to five hundred pounds per acre, and obtaining from half of the present acreage all of the fibre needed, leaving free a sufficient area to produce the bread, the fruits, the vegetables, the beef and mutton, necessary for the home popula tion, and a surplus of the lighter products for exportation. (See Cotton, in Supplement.) COTTON SEED. The seeds abound in a mild oil, and are very nutritious. A bushel weighs thirty pounds, and yields two and one third quarts of oil, and twelve and a half pounds of meal. They are used as food in some orien tal countries. The oil is readily obtained by pressure; the cake can afterwards be used for fattening stock and as a manure for crops. To some extent, the whole seed is used for cows and fattening in the South, and is said to afford well flavored. milk.