s of Philips in the
_American Agriculturist, DeBow's Review_, etc., and in J.A. Turner, ed.,
_The Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 98-123.]

The newspapers and farm journals everywhere printed arguments in the
'forties in behalf of crop diversification, and _DeBow's Review_, founded
in 1846, joined in the campaign; but the force of habit, the dearth of
marketable substitutes and the charms of speculation conspired to make all
efforts of but temporary avail. The belt was as much absorbed in cotton in
the 'fifties as it had ever been before.

Meanwhile considerable improvement had been achieved in cotton methods.
Mules, mainly bred in Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, largely replaced
the less effective horses and oxen; the introduction of horizontal plowing
with occasional balks and hillside ditches, checked the washing of the
Piedmont soils; the use of fertilizers became fairly common; and cotton
seed was better selected. These last items of manures and seed were the
subject of special campaigns. The former was begun as early as 1808 by the
Virginian John Taylor of Caroline in his "Arator" essays, and was furthered
by the publications of Edmund Ruffin and many others. But an adequate
available source of fertilizers long remained a problem without solution.
Taylor stressed the virtues of dung and rotation; but the dearth of forage
hampered the keeping of large stocks of cattle, and soiling crops were
thought commonly to yield too little benefit for the expense in labor.
Ruffin had great enthusiasm for the marl or phosphate rock of the Carolina
coast; but until the introduction in much later decades of a treatment by
sulphuric acid this was too little soluble to be really worth while as a
plant food. Lime was also praised; but there were no local sources of it in
the districts where it was most needed.

Cotton seed, in fact, proved to be the only new fertilizer generally
available in moderate abundance prior to the building of the railroads. In
early years the seed lay about the gins as refuse until it became a public
nuisance. To abate it the village authorities of Sparta, Georgia, for
example, adopted in 1807 an ordinance "that the owner of each and every
cotton machine within the limits of said town shall remove before the first
day of May in each year all seed and damaged cotton that may be about such
machines, or dispose of such seed or cotton so as to prevent its unhealthy
putrefaction."[24] Soon after this a planter