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Show SELECTED. DISCOVERT IS COTTON CULTURE. CUL-TURE. The Peinopolis, Alabama, Exponent, Expo-nent, of November 23th, tells the following fol-lowing almost incredible story about the growth of & cotton tree, protected from the frost; In 1S67 a planter of this county, living liv-ing some twelve miles from this city, conceived the idea that the cotton plant properly cared for could be made to bear for more than one year. He believed be-lieved that the vitality of the plant was destroyed by frost and frost only. The result of his experience, which wo will give in his own words, is of unspeakable unspeaka-ble importance to the material interest of the cotton growing country, plao'ng us above and beyond the necessities and annoyances of our present system of labor. His account of his success which is far beyond his most sanguine expectations, expecta-tions, is largely vouched for, and is ns follows. "I lost a large amount of moncy in I860, the year succeeding the surrender, in my farming operations and despaired, des-paired, almost, of the future of the cotton section, in the many sleepless nichts I passed thinking over my own affairs and what the future had in store for niyscif and neighbors, whose dependence de-pendence for existence rested solely upon agricultural productions, of which the culture of cotton waa the chiefest, the mainstay, in fact, of the cotton States, the foundation upon which they built all they enjoyed of prosperity in manufacturing, in hanking, in merchandizing, mer-chandizing, in all that went to make up the sum of their varied industries and interests, threatened, as these interests in-terests seemed to be, about to suffer extinction by a system of labor that made the cost of production of the cotton cot-ton crop greater than the value of the article produced. By inspiration, for it could have been nothing else, it occurred oc-curred to me that could the annual killing of the plant by frost be prevented pre-vented the plant might become a tree a fruitful ever-bearing tree. "Success has exceeded my most sanguine expectations, my wildc.-t dreams. 1 will tell you exactly how I proceeded and describe the result. In the spring of 1867 I selected a spot of ground about forty feet square, planted plant-ed in the centre a cotton feed, tended it carefully; in September I built about it a pen some eight feet square and covered it with glas, kept a thermometer ther-mometer in it, and by the aid of a small stove, kept lite and gioicth in he plant until May of 186S, at which time I removed the pen. During the summer of 'OS my plant grew till it became a small tree. In the fall of the year I picked 800 pounds of seed cotton from it and built another pen on the same plan, but larger than tho fiist; ibllowed the same process through the winter and again removed my pen in the spring of '09. That year I picked from what was then a tree, cotton that made a bale of 47(1 pounds. The tree had now grown so large that I deemed it sale from frost, and in the winter of '69 and '70 I left it unprotected. un-protected. In the spring of '70 it bloomed at tho same time with the peach tree, and in the fall I made from it 1,293 pounds of lint cotton. At this writing the tree is in full bloom i nnH nmmlnn at loner. tlrpn Hnloc Af cotton and is the wonder of all who see it. "It is some twenty or twenty-five feet in height, measures at the butt nineteen inches in diameter, shows no signs of decay, and will probably live and bear fruit for years to come. If this statement does not settle the labor question nothing will. I have endeavored en-deavored to describe succinctly the result re-sult of my experiment; to have entered fully into all the minutia would have occupied a volume, but if this short article shall turn the attention of planters plant-ers to the following up of this marvelous marvel-ous 'progress, my purpose will have been answered." |