l. A small harrow
follows, covering the seed, and the work of planting is complete.

A planting-gang consists of drivers for the planters, drivers for the
harrows, persons who scatter the seed, and attendants to supply
them with seed. The seed is drawn from the gin-house to the field
in ox-wagons, and distributed in convenient piles of ten or twenty
bushels each.

Cotton-seed has never been considered of any appreciable value, and
consequently the negroes are very wasteful in using it. In sowing it
in the field, they scatter at least twenty times as much as necessary,
and all advice to use less is unheeded. It is estimated that there are
forty bushels of seed to every bale of cotton produced. A plantation
that sends a thousand bales of cotton to market will thus have forty
thousand bushels of seed, for which there was formerly no sale.

With the most lavish use of the article, there was generally a surplus
at the end of the year. Cattle and sheep will eat cotton-seed, though
not in large quantities. Boiled cotton-seed is fed to hogs on all
plantations, but it is far behind corn in nutritious and fattening
qualities. Cotton-seed is packed around the roots of small trees,
where it is necessary to give them warmth or furnish a rich soil for
their growth. To some extent it is used as fuel for steam-engines, on
places where the machinery is run by steam. When the war deprived the
Southern cities of a supply of coal for their gasworks, many of them
found cotton seed a very good substitute. Oil can be extracted from it
in large quantities. For several years, the Cotton-Seed Oil Works of
Memphis carried on an extensive business. Notwithstanding the many
uses to which cotton-seed can be applied, its great abundance makes it
of little value.

The planting-gang which we started on that Monday morning, consisted
of five planters and an equal number of harrows, sowers, etc. Each
planter passed over about six acres daily, so that every day gave us
thirty acres of our prospective cotton crop. At the end of the week
we estimated we had about a hundred and seventy acres planted. On the
following week we increased the number of planters, but soon reduced
them, as we found we should overtake the plows earlier than we
desired. By the evening of Monday, May 2d, we had planted upward of
four hundred acres. A portion of it was pushing out of the ground, and
giving promise of rapid growth.

During this period the business was under the d