little ado about it.  Men of a more flamboyant sort, such as M.W.  Philips, contemning such “ruffle-shirt cant,” would christen their strains with attractive names, publish their virtues as best they might, and offer their fancy seed for sale at fancy prices.  Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or Okra cotton was in vogue, selling at many places for five dollars a quart.  In 1839 this was eclipsed by the Alvarado strain, which its sponsors computed from an instance of one heavily fruited stalk nine feet high and others not so prodigious, might yield three thousand pounds per acre.[32] Single Alvarado seeds were sold at fifty cents each, or a bushel might be had at $160.  In the succeeding years Vick’s Hundred Seed, Brown’s, Pitt’s, Prolific, Sugar Loaf, Guatemala, Cluster, Hogan’s, Banana, Pomegranate, Dean, Multibolus, Mammoth, Mastodon and many others competed for attention and sale.  Some proved worth while either in increasing the yield, or in producing larger bolls and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionate weight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the test of planting proved most of them to be merely commonplace and not worth the cost of carriage.  Extreme prices for seed of any strain were of course obtainable only for the first year or two; and the temptation to make fraudulent announcement of a wonder-working new type was not always resisted.  Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but the succession of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism.  In 1853 a certain Miller of Mississippi confided to the public the fact that he had discovered by chance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cotton per acre than any other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly named it Accidental Poor Land Cotton.  John Farrar of the new railroad town Atlanta was thereby moved to irony.  “This kind of cotton,” he wrote in a public letter, “would run a three million bale crop up to more than four millions; and this would reduce the price probably to four or five cents.  Don’t you see, Mr. Miller, that we had better let you keep and plant your seed?  You say that you had rather plant your crop with them than take a dollar a pint....  Let us alone, friend, we are doing pretty well—­we might do worse."[33]

[Footnote 32:  Southern Banner( Athens, Ga.), Sept. 20, 1839.]

[Footnote 33:  J.A.  Turner, ed., Cotton Planter’s Manual, p. 98-128.]

In the sea-island branch of the cotton industry the methods differed considerably from those in producing the shorter staple.  Seed selection was much more commonly practiced, and extraordinary care was taken in ginning and packing the harvest.  The earliest and favorite lands for this crop were those of exceedingly light soil on the islands fringing the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.  At first the tangle of live-oak and palmetto roots discouraged the use of the plow; and afterward the need of heavy fertilization with