usand British vessels as having sailed in search of
guano cargoes. The use of it in the United States began about that year;
and nowhere was its reception more eager than in the upland cotton belt.
Its price was about fifty dollars a ton in the seaports. To stimulate the
use of fertilizers, the Central of Georgia Railroad Company announced
in 1858 that it would carry all manures for any distance on its line in
carload lots at a flat rate of two dollars per ton; and the connecting
roads concurred in this policy. In consequence the Central of Georgia
carried nearly two thousand tons of guano in 1859, and more than nine
thousand tons in 1860, besides lesser quantities of lime, salt and bone
dust. The superintendent reported that while the rate failed to cover the
cost of transportation, the effect in increasing the amount of cotton to be
freighted, and in checking emigration, fully compensated the road.[31] A
contributor to the _North American Review_ in January, 1861, wrote: "The
use of guano is increasing. The average return for each pound used in the
cotton field is estimated to be a pound and a half of cotton; and the
planter who could raise but three bales to the hand on twelve acres of
exhausted soil has in some instances by this appliance realized ten bales
from the same force and area. In North Carolina guano is reported to
accelerate the growth of the plant, and this encourages the culture on
the northern border of the cotton-field, where early frosts have proved
injurious."

[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, III, 283.]

[Footnote 31: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Reports_, 1858-1860.]

Widespread interest in agricultural improvement was reported by _DeBow's
Review_ in the 'fifties, taking the form partly of local and general
fairs, partly of efforts at invention. A citizen of Alabama, for example,
announced success in devising a cotton picking machine; but as in many
subsequent cases in the same premises, the proclamation was premature.

As to improved breeds of cotton, public interest appears to have begun
about 1820 in consequence of surprisingly good results from seed newly
procured from Mexico. These were in a few years widely distributed under
the name of Petit Gulf cotton. Colonel Vick of Mississippi then began to
breed strains from selected seed; and others here and there followed his
example, most of them apparently using the Mexican type. The more dignified
of the planters who prided thems