very destructive in gardens, destroying all | jured by their poisonous ravages, whilst the kinds of plants, making no difference, when pressed by hunger, as to the properties contained in them; but when surrounded by a variety, they feed upon those that contain the greatest quantity of saccharine matter; consequently, the young "cotton plant" commands their preference. Various experiments have been made to exterminate them from fields and gardens; some, by turning upon them hogs and poultry during the winter season; others by the use of spade and plow, during the same season. that they may experience the effects of freezing-all of which have proved unavailing. I have made an experiment that has proved successful for the last five or six years, both in farm and garden, I plant in my fields a double quantity of seed, say ten bushels per acre, scattering them broadcast," with a view to feed the worms and have enough left-the same plan works equally well in gardens. I cultivate my gardens in the usual manner, when, about the 10th of April, I sow upon a garden of one acre, thirty or forty bushels of cotton seed, scattered over walks, among plants, &c. In the course of ten days, the seeds having germinated, the garden presents the appearance of a plant bed. It remains in this condition until about the 5th May, when what cotton is left is cut up, leaving the most of the garden plants unharmed. They are not disposed to travel when they can find any thing green near them. Their term of life is short, say ten days, when they pass into the chrysalis; the same length of time transpires when they pass into the butterfly stage. I would here remark, when I wish to plant a new variety of cotton, and cannot afford to pay for seed to be sown so abundantly, I plant seed of the more common kind in the middle of the row and sides of the bed, giving time for them to sprout, that the worm may begin to feed on them. I then mark off the bed, and plant the more valuable seed. In this way. I have been able to get good "stands," of fine varieties of seed, with two bushels per acre. Next to the worm comes the "cotton louse;" they, for the last ten years, (with one exception, 1840, when they made their appearance 20th June, and remained until the 10th of July, yet seasons favored, and fine crops were made,) have made their appearance from the 20th to the 25th May, and remained until the 5th June, when they begin to leave the plant. after killing and destroying from one-third to half that has been left by the hoe for a stand. They have been so regular in their appearance for the last ten years, that my orders to my managers are now, not to reduce "the stand" below, from four to six stacks to the hill, until the 5th of June, at which time you can easily distinguish the plants that have been most in more healthy may remain. They are more numerous in cold, wet springs. How they are brought into existence, is a wonder to all who have examined the cotton fields during their stay upon the plant. Some contend that they are a species of the ant; others, of the lady-bug; others still, that the ants destroy them; but will not pretend to advance an idea as to how they receive their existence. When first discovered, they are mere yellow specks; they soon crawl, and are busy moving about. Next, they assume a black appearance, and be come quite dormant; in ten days this black shell opens, and they, like the cut-worm, or caterpiller, fly off, resembling the guat, or winged ants. My own opinion, from observation, is, that the ant feeds on them; at least, we never see lice on a plant without seeing on the same numerous ants and ladybugs. Whether the aphis, which emits the honey-dew, is among the crowd, and attracts the ants, we are not sufficiently versed in entomology to decide-we would be gratified to read a treatise on plant-lice, lady-bugs, and aphis, from some of your intelligent correspondents. I have not a remaining doubt that they cause the rust, which at one time I attributed to the want of some chemical property in the soil, and had determined to have it tested by having some of the soil analyzed; before I had an opportunity of testing the matter, however, I was convinced that such was not the case, from the fact that every variety of soil was affected in the same way. The rust is at all times the most fatal of diseases to the plant. It cannot be doubted that the insect poisons the plant by extracting the sap, which leaves it in an unhealthy condition. The rust has no regular time for its coming. I have seen it as early as the middle of May, and from that time till the middle of July, on from one to ten stalks, when it assumes a more formidable shape, spreading over entire plantations in the course of three or four weeks. If produced by insects, might they not be destroyed during the first two months, when they are confined to a few stalks in a place, by sifting lime over the stalks affected, early in the morning, whilst the plant is moist with dew? We have known gardeners to use lime in this way, to drive insects from plants, with great success. It would not cost much labor if taken at the commencement of the disease; we have bought a few barrels of lime for the purpose of making the experiment; but of course do not intend to apply these remarks to the prairie lands, where the rust is confined to certain spots every year, owing (we sup pose) to a want of moisture, as we generally see it on those spots of ground where the limestone rock approaches near the surface. In the flat lands of South Carolina and This, description, by a celebrated entomologist, somewhat resembles the kind of insect which, in my opinion, produces the diseases alluded to. Their making their appearance in small quantities in May and June, then in mid-summer extending so rapidly, sustains me in this position. Georgia-or "flat woods," as they are themselves; and, what seems scarcely credicalled-we suppose the cause to be the same ble, the winged females lay eggs; and, as with us, as there is some similarity be- whilst this operation is going on, a solitary tween those lands and some parts of the winged blight may be observed on the Valley of the Mississippi. Nothing could be under side of the leaves, or on the young of so much advantage to the cotton interest, as shoots, particularly on the hop, and differing the discovery of some remedy, either to ar- from all its own progeny in being winged, rest or prevent the various diseases to which and nearly black, whereas its progeny are the plant has of late years become so liable. green, and without wings. These are mysDo "cotton lice" belong to the family of teries which I leave for entomologists to "blights" described by Rusticus? He says, explain. In May, a fly lays a lot of eggs: (in a letter on Blights,") "I have taken a these eggs hatch and become blights; these good deal of pains to find out the birth and blights' are viviparous, and that without parentage of true blights; and for this pur- the usual union of the sexes, and so are pose have watched, day after day, the colo- their children and grandchildren-the num nies of them in my own garden, and single ber of births depending solely on the ones which I have kept in-doors,' and quantity and quality of their food. At last, under tumblers turned up-side down. The as winter approaches, the whole generation, increase is prodigious; it beats everything or series of generations, assumes wings, of the kind that I have ever seen or heard which the parents did not possess; underof. Insects in general come from an egg- goes frequently a change in color; and in then turn to a caterpillar, which does the spring, instead of being viviparous, lays nothing but eat-then to a chrysalis, which eggs." does nothing but sleep-then to a perfect beetle or fly, which does nothing but increase its kind; but blights' proceed altogether on another system-the young ones are born exactly like the old ones, but less. They stick their beaks through the rind, and begin drawing sap, when only a day old, and go on quietly sucking away for days; and then, all at once, without love, courtship or matrimony, each individual begins bringing forth young ones, and continues to do so for months, at the rate of from a dozen to eighteen every day, and yet continues to increase in size all the while; there seem to be no males-no drones-all bring forth alike. Early in the year, these blights' are scattered along the stems; but as soon as the little ones come to light, and commence sap-sucking close to their mother, the spaces get filled up, and the old ones look like giants among the rest-when all the spare room is filled up, and the stalk completely covered. The young ones, on making their final appearance in the world, seem rather posed as to what to be at, and stand quietly on the backs of the others for an hour or so; then, as if having made up their minds, they toddle upwards, walking on the backs of the whole flock, till they arrive at the upper end of the shoot, and then settle themselves quietly down, as close as possible to the outermost of their friends, and then commence sap-sucking like the rest. The flock, by this means, extends in length every day, and at last the growing shoot is overtaken by the multitude, and completely covered to the very tip. Towards autumn, however, the blights undergo a change in their nature; their feet stick close to the rindtheir skin opens along the back, and a winged blight comes out-the summer generation being generally wingless. These are male and female, and fly about and enjoy He also speaks of the skin of the insect opening on the back, and turning to a winged gnat, which is the case with the kind we describe, except that ours open, say in twenty days. May not season and climate cause those changes? I think they may with great propriety be called the cotton blights, as the plant does not recover from their poisonous effects during the whole season, when they have been very numerous; yet with good seasons, by which I mean neither too wet nor too dry, good crops have been made from plants which were, to all appearances, dead on the 10th day of June. To this family of blights, the same author assimilates the "hop-fly" of England, and speaks of their effect as lessening the value of the crop one-half; he says, this little insignificant fly has control of £750,000 of income to the British treasury. The same species of blight draws even a greater proportion from the pockets of the Southern planters. He also enumerates several varieties of the family of blights, all preying upon the young and juicy parts of the most tender shoots, destroying their form and beauty, and making the best of fruits tasteless and insipid. The next in turn of disasters from this great family of insects, is the boll-worm, which makes its appearance from the third to the fourth week in July. It seems to be regular in its annual visits, oftener in wet than in dry seasons. Much has been said and written about destroying them. Indivi duals have traveled over the cotton country professing to have found "the great secret." I have tried several of their plans, one of which is, to top the cotton the fourth week in July, and destroy the bud of the plant. I have no doubt that many of the eggs, or much of the larvæ, are destroyed in this way-but it is ruinous to the plant to top it so early, causing it to throw out many new branches, which are too late to make cotton. Besides, you destroy some three or four branches by taking out the whole bud, which would mature. Another plan has been to build fire lights" to catch the miller." This, too, has its merits, without injury to the plants. Beyond a doubt, the insects commence in the top bud of the stalk, when so very small that they are not able to bore a form of any size, but leave "their mark" on the young form, as a sting. Soon they grow strong, and proceed down the stalk, taking the forms both large and small, until they are able to destroy the full-grown fruit, extracting from every form the whole of the glutinous substance, which causes the very young ones to drop from the stalk, and those nearly ready to bloom to "flare open," plainly showing where the worm is at work. The older ones rot. These marks showed their effects so plainly, that it caused me, with several others, to put our hands in the field to catch them; and in a few days the hands became so expert, that they would catch from three to five hundred per day. If no other good is effected, we may save nearly that number of stalks from ruin. Besides, it is a leisure season of the year, and not so tedious as one would at first suppose. Ten hands will worm upwards of one hundred acres per day. This process should be repeated every three or four days; the "flare," with their excretions, plainly show the plants they are working upon. The next pest to the cotton planter is the caterpillar, or "cheneille," which makes its appearance from the 25th of August to the 25th of September. When they come early they do the crop a great deal of damagewhen late, but little. For the last ten years we can only recollect them as injuring the crop in 1846. Are they not a continuation of the "cut worm?" Having passed through several changes, they pass into the chrysalis and web to the stems of the leaf upon which they have fed. They then pass into the butterfly, or are destroyed by cold. Is it not possible, by watching this numerous tribe of the butterfly family, to destroy them early in the season of their coming? Entomologists describe all these insects at first as few in number, but increasing, from each parent, from fifteen hundred to three thousand in a short time, and making various changes. Could they be destroyed, I feel convinced that the plant would be relieved of all its diseases! May we not expect, through your columns, a treatise on these various insects which feed on the plant? You can command such works as Kirby, Spence, Stephens and Curtis, and a host of others, which are not generally possessed by planters; yet no class of mankind could improve themselves more by the study of entomology for upon our labors the insect world commit their ravages, and destroy the pleasure as well as profits of planting, by changing. in a few days, the most promising harvest fields into absolute poverty.—M. H. McG. COTTON-ITS PREPARATION, PICKING AND PACKING.-Land intended to be planted in cotton should be bedded up as early in the winter as possible, to allow the freezes to pulverize the soil thoroughly and the land to settle immediately under the tap root. The plowing should be done with the best turning plows, as deeply as the nature and depth of the soil will admit, and in the most thorough manner. Especial care should be taken to leave no land unbroken between the furrows. If the soil is stiff and deep, two-horse plowing, to a depth commensurate with that of the soil and ease to the team, is infinitely preferable; this secures a more thorough drainage and greater and freer penetration of the roots of the plant to the most sub-soil, in either wet or dry summers. The rows should be laid off with a scooter plow, at distances suitable to the strength of the soil, say five and a half feet to six feet on bottom land, and four to five feet on upland, or even less than four, if the soil is thin. Stubble land to go in cotton, (which should always follow corn, small grain, or fallow land,) should be broken or bedded up very early in the winter, to allow time for grass seeds and stalks to rot, and the frost to disintegrate furrow slice and clods. A good plan on stubble, corn, or fallow land to go in cotton, is to lay off the rows with a scooter plow; enlarge the furrow with a shovel plow; drag all the grass weeds or stalks into the furrows, and then list two furrows of a two-horse plow upon the soil of vegetable matter, leaving the bulks to be well plowed out with a turning plow about a fortnight before planting. trash out of the way in chopping out, and provides an absorbent for moisture and a bulk of manure beneath each bed. If a heavy rain or baking wind should run the land together, and form a crust upon the bed, a one-horse harrow run over the bed will pulverize the crust and put the land in good tilth. Cotton should be planted from the fifteenth of March to the tenth of April, as the season or sort of land warrants. Seed should be well saved, and if kept over one year for planting, will ensure a better stand and more vigorous plants, as the imperfect This puts all seed perish by keeping over. They should be sown at the rate of one and a half to two bushels to the acre, in direct proportion to the width of the rows (narrow ones requiring more seed) and the stiffness of the soil, the latter case demanding also more seed. Seed on light land may be covered with a board with a notch in it, attached to a scooter stock. But stiff lands should always be covered with a harrow, or two small scooter furrows. The ridge, in the latter case, over the seed, to be scraped off with a board with a notch in it, as soon as the seed cracks the ground in germinating. The board is useful in scraping off the first coat of grass; the first plowing of cotton should begin when the third leaf appears on the young plant, and be done with a sweep, Mississippi scraper, or some similar implement, as no roots are lacerated by this process, and the plant suffers no check in growth; chopping should begin in from four to seven days after running round, and to be done with hoes of as nearly equal size as possible, the stand being more uniform in consequence. From one to four stalks should be left in a stand at this time, and the distance between stands governed by the strength of the soil; though thick planting in moderation on all soils-say six feet by eighteen inches on bottom land, and four feet by twelve inches on good upland-will be found the most productive in an average of years. The second plowing should be done with a sweep next to the bottom, with a mould board next to the plant, to dirt the young cotton, and the balance of the row plowed out with a turning plow to keep up the bed. The stand should then be thinned to one stalk in a place on strong land, but from two to four may be left on being thinned to supply limbs by stalks; all subsequent plowing in ordinary seasons should be done with the sweep, with the mould board to keep up the bed. But in laying by, one or two furrows should be run by a turning plow to drain off the surplus water from heavy rains; bottoms should be plowed every twenty days, and hoed immediately to keep it constantly growing, the earth light and pervious to the sun, air and dews. In very wet seasons, recourse may be had to turning plows with benefit, provided they do not penetrate deeply near the plant, for this checks the plant if it turns off by breaking the roots, and causes it to shed, and forces it too much in growth if rain follows speedily. It is doubtful whether topping cotton is beneficial in the average of years, sometimes doing well, and at others failing in nearly similar circumstances. by lost. In full crop years, cotton should be COTTON BALED WITH IRON HOOPS.-The subjoined letter, written, I have no doubt, in a spirit of perfect candor, and intended fairly and in good faith by the writer, to present a true statement of the relative advantages of rope and iron hoops in the packing of cotton, nevertheless contains objections to the use of the latter article, which I conceive so untenable, that I send the letter to you for publication; hoping it may arrest the attention of R. Abbey, Esq,, of Mississippi, or some one else practically acquainted with the subject, and elicit a reply. As they are the objections not of the writer of the latter, but of that entire community of cotton sellers and buyers of Mobile, who control the preparation for market of so large a portion of the Southern crop, I hope Mr. Abbey, whose valuable article in your January number, contains so many good reasons for preferring the hoop iron, will not think them undeserving a reply. With several newly invented, and, as I believe, improved cotton presses, just coming into use, we can certainly pack our bales within a square of 22 inches, and if we can persuade our mercantile friends in Mobile, that there is no good Picking should begin as soon as a hand reason why bales thus packed, and kept can gather fifty pounds in a day, as the oil in their square form by the unelastic iron hoop, is soon evaporated by the sun, wind and should be "unmerchantable"-we can cerrain, and a large per cent. of weight is there-tainly avoid the onerous tax of repacking foot. them in Mobile-but as long as we use the we have been told, is 30 lbs. to the cubic hemp rope, which by stretching, allows our bales to lose their compact square shape, and to become enlarged and flattened, so as not to pack close on shipboard, we must submit to the tax of repacking. DEAR SIR: MOBILE, SEPT. 8, 1847. Your favor of the 29th ult., is before us, and contents have had our attention. Cotton compressed is only reduced in depth, and the average is about one-third less than the bale before being compressed. A large light bale will be reduced more than a smaller one of the same weight. The presses run them down nearly half the depth; but when the ropes are tied and the bale turned out, it expands, so that it is reduced by compressing about one-third in depth-the length and breadth being the same as before compressing. A few years ago, a lot of cotton came to this port with iron hoops, but it was pronounced unmerchantable, because, in compressing, the hoops had to be taken off and ropes substituted. The planter discontinued the use of hoops, and none have since been received here put up with them. All cotton is pronounced unmerchantable that has other than good grass or hemp ropes on it. A correspondent of the Review, in the December number, writing from Burtau, Alabama, over the signature of "An Alabama Planter," communicates what purports to be a letter from a mercantile house in Mobile, (without any signature,) on the subject of Banding Cotton Bales with Iron Hoops instead of Rope, and makes a personal request of me that I would reply to that communication, because he thinks it defective in its reasonings on the subject; and he is pleased to do me the honor to suppose that I I am practically acquainted with the question in hand. I could not consent to make a public reply to the Mobile letter, without expressing an opinion adverse to its authenticity. I suppose your friend in Alabama has been imposed upon by means of a spurious letter. No merchant in Mobile can, upon reflection, entertain the views therein expressed; nor can any man, whether he has ever seen a bale of cotton or not. For instance, the letter says:-"All cotton is pronounced unmerchantable that has other than good grass or hemp ropes on it." Cotton cordage is used for this purpose to some extent, and it is known to be superior or a least as good as Could you even put up your cotton in the hemp or grass. (It is superior only because size of compressed bales, we think it would if exposed to the weather a long time it will be the best to use hemp ropes. In loading a last without rotting much longer.) And I preship, the cotton is driven by means of jack- sume it is difficult to conceive why cotton, if screws so tight that iron hoops would break-offered for sale in Mobile in cotton ropes, where rope would only be loosened and removed a little, and when the cotton is turned out, the expansion immediately fastens the ropes again-even though cotton is compressed as well as it can be done; in stowing the ships it is often driven so hard by means of jack-screws that ropes are loosened, and shippers say that the iron hoops would break. We can purchase the hoop iron as follows:-at 7 cts. per lb. should be pronounced "unmerchantable." Again, the letter says that, "in loading a ship, the cotton is driven by means of jackscrews so tight that iron hoops would break." An expansive pressure from the inside of the bale outwards, would, I should suppose, cause the hoops to break if they were not strong enough. But I should hardly think that a pressure on the outside of the bale would produce the same effect. The entire paragraph from which the last Hoop Iron 4 guage 20, say 7 ft. 4 in. weighs 12 oz. quotation above is taken, reads as follows: 66 /% 20," 7 ft. 4 in. 66 7 ft. 4 in. 66 14 oz. 66 20, Rivets to suit, say 2lb. iron rivets, can be bought at 75 cts. per thousand. "Could you even put up your cotton in the size of compressed bales, we think it would be the best to use hemp ropes. In loading a ship the cotton is driven by means of jackWe have stated all that we can learn about screws so tight that iron hoops would break this matter, and we think the use of iron-where rope would only be loosened and hoops instead of ropes is not viewed in a favorable light by dealers, shippers, &c., of cotton. You will find in the January number of De Bow's Commercial Review, published in New-Orleans, an interesting and well-written article on the mode of putting up cotton in the best manner for market, to which we beg to refer you, if you have not already perused it. The average weight of a compressed bale, removed a little, and when the cotton is turned out the expansion immediately fastens the ropes again-even though cotton is compressed as well as can be done; in stowing ships it is often driven so hard, by means of jack-screws, that ropes are loosened, and shippers say that the iron hoops would break." A very great advantage of iron hoops over rope, in banding cotton bales, is well known and has always been admitted to be, that the |