The importation of fertilizers began with guano.  This material, the dried droppings of countless birds, was discovered in the early ’forties on islands off the coast of Peru;[30] and it promptly rose to such high esteem in England that, according to an American news item, Lloyd’s listed for 1845 not less than a thousand 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 themselves on selling nothing but cotton, would distribute among their friends parcels of seed from any specially fine plants they might encounter in their fields, and make