In the thirties Harriet Martineau and J.S.

Buckingham noted that in Alabama the seed was being strewn as manure on a large scale.[26] As an improvement of method the seed was now being given in many cases a preliminary rotting in compost heaps, with a consequent speeding of its availability as plant food;[27] and cotton seed rose to such esteem as a fertilizer for general purposes that many planters rated it to be worth from sixteen to twenty-five cents a bushel of twenty-five pounds.[28] As early as 1830, furthermore a beginning was made in extracting cottonseed oil for use both in painting and illumination, and also in utilizing the by-product of cottonseed meal as a cattle feed.[29] By the 'fifties the oil was coming to be an unheralded substitute for olive oil in table use; but the improvements which later decades were to introduce in its extraction and refining were necessary for the raising of the manufacture to the scale of a substantial industry.
[Footnote 24: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Jan.

31, 1807.] [Footnote 25: Letter of John Palmer.Dec.3, 1808, to David Ramsay.MS.

in the Charleston Library.] [Footnote 26: Harriet Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_, (London, 1838), I, 218; I.S.Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, 1842), I, 257.] [Footnote 27: D.R.Williams of South Carolina described his own practice to this effect in an essay of 1825 contributed to the _American Farmer_ and reprinted in H.T.Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R.Williams_ (New York, 1916), pp.

226, 227.] [Footnote 28: J.A.Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p.