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AGRICULTURE 225 With the consideration of cotton seed oil and meal we produced 27,000,000. Since the Civil War the rice have not, however, exhausted its possibilities. Cotton industry has been developing steadily in Louisiana; it seed hulls constitute about half the weight of the ginned averaged nearly 30,000,000 pounds for the decade 1870-80, seed. After the seed has been passed through a fine gin, 71,000,000 pounds in 1880-90, and obtained its greatest which takes off the short lint left upon it by the farmer, development in 1892, when it reached 182,000,000 pounds. it is passed through what is called a sheller, consisting of The annual production is only about one-half as great as a revolving cylinder, armed with numerous knives, which the annual consumption. The only statistics available are cut the seed in two and force the kernels from the shells. those made up by commercial companies, and represent The shells and kernels are then separated in a winnowing only the amounts placed upon the market. The quantities machine. This removal of the shell makes a great consumed at home and retained for seed are considerable, difference in the oilcake, as the decorticated cake is more but cannot be ascertained. The following table is from nutritious than the undecorticated. For a long time statistics reported by Dan Talmage’s Sons Co., and gives these shells or hulls, as they are called, were burned at oil the annual average market production of rice for the mills for fuel, two and a half tons being held equal to a cord periods 1881-90 and 1891-98 :— of wood, and four and a third tons to a ton of coal. The Table XX.—Annual Average Market Production of Rice in the hulls thus burned produced an ash containing an average United States for the periods 1881-90 and 1891-98. of 9 per cent, of phosphoric acid and 24 per cent, of potash—a very valuable fertilizer in itself, and one eagerly sought by growers of tobacco and vegetables. It was not long, however, before the stock-feeder in the South found that cotton seed hulls were an excellent substitute for hay. They are now fed on a very large scale in the vicinity of The annual imports of rice in the United States for 1894 to oil mills in southern cities like Memphis, New Orleans, 1899 averaged 121,000,000 pounds, and the imports of broken Houston, and Little Hock, from 500 to 5000 cattle being rice, flour, and meal, 63,000,000 pounds—the whole having an often collected in a single yard for this purpose. No average annual value of $3,200,000. other feed is required, the only provision necessary being Flax and Hemp. an adequate supply of water and an occasional allowance The total number of acres devoted to the cultivation of of salt. Many thousands of cattle are fattened annually in this way at remarkably low cost. For this purpose flax for seed and fibre, both in 1889, was only 1,318,698. The production of flax seed was 10,250,000 bushels and hulls sell at from $2.50 to $3 per ton. The following diagram, modified from one by Grim- the production of fibre 242,000 pounds. Throughout the shaw, in accordance with the results obtained by the greater portion of the flax-producing region the straw is. better class of modern mills, gives an interesting resume not utilized, even for tow or for paper-making. That portion °f the Jlax straw having a determinable value was only of the products obtained from a ton of cotton seed : 207,/ 57 tons. The total value of all flax products in 1889 Products from a Ton of Cotton Seed. was $10,436,000. The imports of flax fibre and manuCotton seed, 2000 pounds. factured goods amount to from $16,000,000 to $18,000,000 a year, and $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 of this represents Linters, 23 pounds. raw flax fibre. In consideration of these facts, the United Meats, 1090 pounds. Hulls, 888 pounds. States Department of Agriculture is making special efforts to establish the flax fibre industry in the United States. Cake, 800 pounds. I Experiments have been carried on in Minnesota, Oregon, Meal. Fibre. and Washington, which indicate that flax can be successBran. (Feeding stuff. Fertilizer.) i fully grown for fibre in these States. In 1860 nearly (High-grade paper.) (Cattle food.) Crude oil, 290 pounds. 100,000 tons of hemp {Cannabis sativa) were produced, I Summer Yellow. while in 1895 hardly more than 5000 tons were reported Soap stock. (Fuel.) (Winter I Cotton seed for the whole country. The introduction of Manila hemp, yellow I stearin.) Soaps. Ashes. the large importation of jute, and the decline in American (Cattle food) with the meal. shipbuilding are the reputed causes for this falling-off. Salad oil. The census of 1890 showed 25,000 acres in hemp, yielding Summer white. Fertilizer. 11,500 long tons, worth $1,102,000. Nearly all of this These together, was grown in the State of Kentucky. Lard. a very valuable manure. Cottolene (with beef stearin, cooking oil). Tobacco. Miners’ oil. The tobacco crop of 1889 amounted to 488,256,646 pounds, grown upon 695,301 acres; that of 1879’was Soap. 472,661,157 pounds, grown on 638,841 acres, which shows Rice. an increase of about 9 per cent, in acreage and 4 per cent, Rice production in the United States is limited to that in products. The average yield per acre for 1879 was portion of the South Atlantic States nearest the sea. For 738-28 pounds; for 1889, 702-22 pounds. Tobacco is two decades prior to 1861 the annual production of grown to a greater or less extent in nearly every State and rice in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia territory, the only exceptions being the northern Rocky averaged more than 1,000,000 pounds of the clean grain. Mountain States: but it is a commercial product in only South Carolina produced over three-fourths of this. This fifteen States, which together raise 98 per cent, of the industry was wrecked by the Civil War and has never crop of the country. These fifteen States are, in the order been fully restored. From 1866 to 1880, inclusive, the of the weight of the crop, Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, annual production of these three States averaged only Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina, Maryland, Connecticut, about 40,000,000 pounds, of which South Carolina pro- Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, New York, Massachusetts, duced one-half. Since 1880 their average annual produc- Illinois, West Virginia. Two other States, Florida and tion has been 46,000,000 pounds, of which South Carolina Texas, are known to have produced some cigar tobacco S. I. — 29