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39 S. Cultivator 1 (1881)

handle is hein.slavery/socultva0039 and id is 1 raw text is: 


















                                        ansI  ~i  ~  agoj J1ai4.

FORJ~  THE   FLANTATIO% THE GARDEIN ALND THE FAILY CIRCLE.


YOL   IIIII;                ATLANTA 9A, JAiNUARY, 1881,                      No.  1.


SE0  COVE    POP  CONTENTS,   TEBMS,   fe.

   CONSTITUTION PUB. CO.,


         W.  L. JONES, Editor.


  ~gricallaral glepartment.

    THOUGHTS FOR THE MONTH.

  The farm year coincides pretty closely with
  the civil or legal, and the beginning of a new
stute  year, affords a natural and convenient
occasion to examine what  progress has been
made  and in what directions the indications
point for the future. During the last fifteen
years very great changes have taken place in
our  agriculture-changes both practical and
  eoretical. We have entered upon a new era.
  Itisdawn began before the war, when Mr. David
  Dickson and a few others in the South firmly
  grasped the idea that soils-were impoverished
  ly the exhaustion, not of all, but of a few of
  their ingredients, and that these could be
  eaply and  proftably procured and applied
  in commercial articles, the supplies of which
twere abundant, and the bulk is so small as to
     it of feady application to the soil. The
struction  of slavery gave a: great impulse to
he   iew idea, because labor became a cash com-
   ity, and in absence of compulsory process,
        AA


a very dear one; and the necessity of supple-
menting it by fertilizers and by labor-saving
implements, forced itself upon the attention of
farmers. The views and practices of Mr. Dick-
son, published in this journal, in form of let- J
ters, during the years 1867-68, gave shape and
form to the new policy, and awakened a won-
derful degree of thinking and experimenting
among the farmers of the South. So great was
the interest developed, that the circulation of
the CuzrvAvon   increased in twelve months
from under  three thousand to over fourteen
thousand copies, and we found it necessary to
issue a separate edition of the Letters'? them-
selves. Encouraged and stimulated by fresh
hopes, the farmers seized the new idea and
pushed it, in many instances, wildly, extrava-
gaptly, and ruinously. The proper conditions
under which concentrated chemical fertilizers
should be applied, the best paying quantities,
the best combinations and proportions--these
points had not been yet fully settled, and there
was, in the very nature of things, much grop-
ing in the dark. That many.mistakes should
be made was natural and to be expected. The
history of this movement resembles that of all
great discoveries. The discovery of a great
principle or law is followed for many years
with an unfolding of its bearings or practical
applications. Theoretical suggestions have to
be verified by trials, by facts, by experiment
and experience. Time is *quisite for this; in
agriculture a.long time, !Jecause it takes a4J
least a year to make an experiment. For the
last ten years this work has been going on;


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