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done nothing hitherto, are now sowing, so that we shall have about the same number of acres as in 1854. How much of it will be secured remains to be seen, and how we shall get it ground is another question, seeing the mill is on the island of Oahu.

WOMAN.

BY WILLIAM LEGGETT.

No star in yonder sky that shines
Can light like woman's eye impart;
The earth holds not in all its mines

A germ so rich as woman's heart;
Her voice is like the music sweet

Poured out from airy harp alone;
Like that when storms more loudly beat,
It yields a clearer, richer tone.
And woman's love's a holy light,

That brighter, brighter burns, for aye;
Years cannot dim its radiance bright;
Nor even falsehood quench its ray;
But like the star of Bethlehem,
Of old to Israel's shepherds given,
It marshals with its steady flame
The erring soul of man to heaven.

Had I engaged in the business of wheat raising with the sole or even chief view of making money, I should not be a little mortified, but greatly so, with my want of success, for I have, thus far, failed to clear any thing. My chief object, however, was to introduce the grain into the country, and persuade my people to cultivate it. In this I have succeeded, and I am more than content. I am thankful. One of my people was quite successful the last year, there being less rain on his place than in my immediate neighborhood. The same man has some fifty acres, which look exceedingly well. Had the mill for flouring been put at Wailuku, where it was de- THE signed at first to place it, so that we could obtain the grinding of our wheat without sending it to sea, I should feel quite whole, after all, on the We hear so much said by chemists and men of subject of wheat. I still hope that all in good science, about minerals and their importance as time we shall have a small flouring mill at that fertilizers, that, without stopping to think, we place, where the water privileges are favorable, should almost be led to believe that these were or perhaps a wind-mill at Makawao, where we raise the precious grain. the only elements of nutrition needed by vegetaYou know, I suppose, that I am pastor of the bles. We are told of the wonderful effects prochurch at this place, and that, of course, I have duced by the application of the various salts of many cares and much labor devolving upon me. ammonia, potash, soda, lime, silex, iron sulphur, My appropriate work I may not neglect for any &c., to the soil. We are pointed to analyses of temporal consideration whatever. Did I not

TRUE VALUE OF THE MINERAL
ELEMENTS OF THE SOIL.

think that my efforts in the agricultural depart- vegetables, shewing the percentage of these element had an important bearing on my ministerial ments contained in their composition, and we are labors in elevating the people from their low almost ready to imagine that vegetables may be condition, teaching them industry and thrift, and manufactured in the laboratory, out of the elegiving them stronger motives for exertion of the

right sort, I would cease at once all attention to ments. Indeed, we should hardly be surprised to business of this kind. I am, besides, unable to hear, one of these days, that Prof. Mapes had toil as formerly, having a maimed hand. The taken out a patent for manufacturing them in a loss of my right hand thumb does not prevent my wholesale way. We hope when he takes out his writing, though I write with pain, but it prevents patent for the manufacture of corn, he will give my doing a thousand things which I have been accustomed to do. I cannot pick up a nail, canit to us in the shape of the whole grain, and not not use the axe, the saw or the plane, and in the shape of flour, or we shall be very apt to scarcely the hoe or the sickle. Still, I can over- suspect that it contains an excess of superphossee the labor of the farm as usual, and can com-phates. mend the cause of agriculture to the increased attention of my people. Our Hawaiian Agricultural Society, formed some two years since, will less of indispensable necessity to the healthful unite with one recently formed at Wailuku, and and vigorous growth of plants. They will not there will be an exhibition of some sort in the be perfect in all their parts without a due procourse of the season. If we shall succeed, you portion of such salts as their several constitutions may expect to hear from us all in good time. require. But these elements are not all which We on Maiu find it of little use to belong to the

But to be serious, mineral elements are doubt

Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, which holds they require. The staple food of plants, that all its meetings and has all its exhibitions, fairs, from which they derive their chief nutriment and &c., at Honolulu. Nothing of the cattle, sheep support, is the carbonaceous matter, which is or swine, nor even of the fowl kind, can we pre- called humus or earth, par excellenee. This is sent for competition. It is time that we had an efficient society of our own. I have never more composed essentially of decayed vegetable and deeply felt the dignity and importance of agri- animal matters. These contain more or less mincultural pursuits than I do now. Noble em- eral matter which previously existed in the vegeployment! It is the business which, so far as this tables of which they were composed when they world is concerned, makes man a co-worker with were in a living state. But after all the talk God in providing for the wants of his almost innumerable family. Would that every husbandman felt the dignity of his labor.

Yours with much respect, J. S. GREEN.

about minerals, the great object of the cultivator must be to obtain an abundant supply of decayed straw, leaves, wood, peat, and the excrements of animals duly mixed and combined, and apply

NEW ENGLAND FARMER.

357

them in a proper state, and at the proper time to It is by comparing together different thoughts the soil, for his plants to feed upon. If in addi- and results, that we approximate to the truth. tion to these, he will apply such mineral elements As "one swallow does not make a summer," so as are adapted to the wants of the soil, or the establish a general truth. But, when the obthe success of one experiment is not sufficient to particular plants which he cultivates, they will servation and experience of all confirm the selfundoubtedly contribute to their more rapid and same thing, the result is certain. What is needed perfect development. upon these subjects is more light, more experiThe attempt to feed vegetables on mineral ence, more practical knowledge-something that manures alone, would be much like attempting to this further light and knowledge shall be atcan be understood and appreciated by all. feed a man upon pepper, salt, mustard, vine- tained, and spread abroad through the commuWhen gar and sugar, and omitting the pork, potatoes nity, so that every farmer shall thoroughly unand meal. The seasoning is all very well, nay it derstand the science of his own calling, then, and is important. It assists digestion; it stimulates not till then, will the grand object for which we the various secreting organs; it promotes appeare laboring be accomplished. tite; it renders the food more palatable. But Warwick, 1855. JOHN GOLDSMITH. seasoning alone will not do. There must be something to season. Such an attempt to save the to friend GOLDSMITH, not only for the excellent pork-barrel, meal-chest, and potato-bin, would articles enumerated above, but also for the priviprove poor economy in the end. He will dig lege of using them when it is convenient for ourmore mud and lay more wall on plenty of beef selves. We shall give them from time to time, and potatoes and bread, than on all the condi- and are confident that the reader will find them ments which the most skilful French cook can both pleasing and instructive. combine, or on all the spices of "Araby the blest." The application of this any one may make for himself.

an

REMARKS.-We are under especial obligations

SPECIAL MANURES FOR FRUIT

TREES

For the New England Farmer. As a general rule, some kind of compost made A VARIETY OF SUBJECTS. of common yard or stable manure, is best and MR. EDITOR-I propose to offer for insertion turf, or of muck and turf, in connexion with onemost reliable for fruit trees. Successive layers of in your very interesting and useful paper, a few third or one-half manure, and a small quantity of brief articles on the following subjects: "Design ashes, worked together after lying a few weeks, and Usefulness of Labor; Antiquity and Dignity will be found admirable in nearly all cases, if of Agriculture; Increased attention to Agricul- used in proper quantities. But in rare instances, ture, and its connection with Chemistry; Ours, a special application proves of eminent advanage of Improvement; Means of Improvement; tage. An example of this sort occurs in the Agriculture an extensive and progressive Science; statement of the Shakers at Harvard, Mass., Good and bad Farming contrasted." Without wishing to be obtrusive, or to appear is clayey, but the trees grew poorly. They appublished in the Patent Office Report. The soil learned or dogmatical, I should like to say some- plied all the special manures suggested by experithing, in a very plain way and as concisely as ments or reading, until observing the effect of possible, upon each of these topics. For my ob- urine on an unthrifty apple tree, they were inject is not to acquire reputation as a writer, or to duced to try it on pear trees that remained unmagnify myself as a philosopher, but to do good thrifty in spite of iron, bone-black, ashes, lime, to the common class of readers, for whose use and high manuring. "The result was, the trees and benefit your paper is especially intended. I shot up a growth as luxuriant as weeds in a hotwish to awaken in the minds of farmers and of bed. Those which had rarely made an inch of farmers' sons a more general interest in the cause growth in a season, grew scions from 18 inches of agriculture, which I regard as the foundation to three feet even, in the summer following the of all other useful employments. For, though operation." The mode was to apply about two agriculture is as old as the creation, and has been quarts, sprinkled around each tree at a time; to the employment of the great mass of men in every stir the surface of the earth a little, so that it age, yet so strangely has it been conducted, even may be well mixed, and prevent the formation of down to our day, that, as a science, it is yet but a crust. in its infancy. In other words, it has not kept operation is repeated a month afterwards; and A cloudy day is recommended. The pace with the improvements which have been again on those trees not showing a satisfactory made in all other employments. Not wishing to take up too much of your valu--the quantity must of course vary with the size result. Caution is needed not to over-stimulate able room at any one time, I have thought it ad- of the trees, but we are not definitely informed visable to present what I have to say in separate in this respect. The full effect is not confined to articles, each article covering less than two-thirds the first year. of a column in your paper. I do not expect, in rather what particular form of at, contained in What particular ingredient, or so brief a manner, to do justice to these topics, this application, not to be found in ordinary maor to present them in a very new or striking nure, produced so extraordinary results, we leave light, but simply to give the results of my own for theorists to determine, if they can do it with reading, observation, experience and reflection. certainty.-Country Gentleman.

For the New England Farmer. EXPERIMENTS WITH POTATOES.

pen, I had 60 lbs. 6 oz. From twenty hills manured with ashes, 43 lbs. 14 oz., and from twenty hills from the two rows adjoining, manured with MR. EDITOR :-Having read from time to time compost, I obtained 50 lbs. 4 oz.; but it must be in your paper others' experience in potato raising, remembered that the soil was not so good where I will send you a short chapter in mine, which these last grew as on the other side of the corn. you may publish, if you think it worth a place I cut the top stalks from the corn not injured in your columns. by dry weather, while the other part I cut up In the month of May, 1853, I broke up about and piked about the same time, which was not half of an acre of moist land, soil a dark loam, far from the 20th of September. Upon the whole with a light marly subsoil, plowed from ten to I think I obtained a good crop, for our hill lands, twelve inches deep, so as to turn up from two to and I will send you my account of labor, &c., three inches of the subsoil; manured the same by with the amount of crop, which you can publish, putting a small shovel full of compost in the hill. if desirable. Hoed them the latter part of June, and dug them the first of October, getting but a small crop, it taking from 60 to 80 hills to make a bushel.

In September, 1853, 1 broke up a strip on each side of the above, in the same manner as in the spring, making a little short of one and threefourths acres in the whole; let the whole remain until May, 1854, when I gave the whole piece a thorough harrowing. Then carted and put on and spread 44 cart loads of green stable manure, each load containing from 25 to 30 bushels. Cross plowed the piece, and turned the manure in from eight to ten inches deep. Furrowed the same north and south, as near three feet apart as I could without measuring. I then commenced on the west side of the piece, and put a small shovel full of compost (made of one-half meadow mud and the other half stable manure,) in a hill, and put the hills two feet apart. I then commenced next to the meadow, and planted four rows without any particular order, as to the amount of

3 days labor with oxen to cart manure....

DR. To 2 days plowing in the fall, with 2 boys, oxen and horse. $6,50 1 day harrowing in spring, with boy and oxen..........1,50 44 loads of green manure to spread...

..44,00

.6,00

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5 bushels of soft corn...........

1 ton top stalks......

1 ton fodder cut up at roots.

1 ton husks....

4 loads pumpkins.

1 bushels white beans..

1 wagon load of cabbages.
25 bushels ruta bagas.

10 square rods corn fodder given green to cows...
135 bushels potatoes...

Small lot melons and squashes..

Total value of crops....
Deduct expenses..

...3,00

...8,00

....0,50

..1,00

..0,33

..1,25

...1,00

.141,08

CR.

.$40,00

.2,00

.10,00

..8,00

.5,00

.4,00

.2.25

.2,00

.4,17

.3,00

..67,50

.1,25

$149,17

.141,10

seed. The next two rows, I put two good sized By 40 bushels of sound corn..... potatoes in a hill, the smallest being as large as a hen's egg. The next two rows, I put two half potatoes in a hill. I then manured about an acre with manure from the hog-yard, and planted it with corn. I then commenced on the other side of the corn to plant potatoes, the land lying a little higher, and not quite as good soil. I then manured two rows with leaves from the forest that had lain in the calf-pen until they had become well-wetted with urine, and thrown out from time to time into a heap; put as many into a hill as I could make lay on a common iron shovel. The two next rows, I put from a pint to a to pay for use of land, which is left in good orquart of wood ashes in the hill. The remainder der for spring grain, which I intend to sow with of the piece I manured with compost, as on the wheat and barley, (without manure,) as soon as other side. I ran a small harrow between the the season will permit. I will, if spared, send rows three times during the month of June, and you the result. hoed the corn three times and the potatoes twice, without making much of a hill; the rows were not far from seventeen rods long, north and south, there being no rows the other way.

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I dug my potatoes the last of September, and FACTS ABOUT MILK.-Cream cannot rise through from twenty hills from the two rows with two a great depth of milk. If, therefore, milk is deseed potatoes in a hill, I obtained 69 lbs. 10 oz. sired to retain its cream for a time, it should be of good sized potatoes. From twenty hills from put into a deep narrow dish; and if it be desired the two with one in a hill, 64 lbs. 6 oz. From to free it most completely of cream, it should be twenty hills where I cut the seed and put two poured into a broad, flat dish, not much exceedhalves in a hill, 64 lbs. 2 oz. From the acre of ing one inch in depth. The evolution of cream is corn I had a very large growth of fodder, and facilitated by a rise, and retarded by a depression obtained 80 bushels of ears of good sound corn, a of temperature. At the usual temperature of part of the piece being injured by the drought, the dairy, 50 degrees Fahrenheit, all the cream so that it did not fill well, not having half as will probably rise in thirty-six hours; but at 70 much corn in quantity, and not so good a quali- degrees it will perhaps rise in half that time; and ty, as on the other part. From twenty hills of when the milk is kept near the freezing point, the two rows manured with leaves from the calf the cream will rise very slowly, because it be

NEW ENGLAND FARMER.

359

comes solidified. In wet and cold weather the slightest prospect of their ever exhibiting any namilk is less rich than in dry and warm, and on tural signs of life. They were perfectly "copper this account more cheese is obtained in cold than fastened!" Luckily I only experimented on a in warm, though not in thundery weather. The

P. T. B.

season has its effects. The milk, in spring, is small portion of my potatoes, and discovered the supposed to be the best for drinking, hence it joke in time to remedy it by planting potatoes in would be best for calves; in summer it is best their natural state. suited for cheese; and in autumn the butter keeping is better than that of summer-the cows less frequently milked, give richer milk and consequently more butter. The morning's milk is

THE WORKING OF COWS.

richer than the evening's. The last drawn milk well as other females-animal and human? We Why should not cows work for their living, as of each milking, at all times and seasons, is richer were visiting a friend the other day, who owns a than the first drawn, which is the poorest.

THE FARM ELEPHANT!

In reply to our inquiries, some time since, as to the amount of provent required per day by Mr. BARNUM's Farm Elephant, he has sent us the following interesting note, with a postscript respecting soaking potatoes in copperas water.

THE FARM ELEPHANT-COPPER BOTTOM POTATOES.
Bridgeport, Ct., July 7, 1855.

small farm, and manages it well; and, in the course of our observations about his premises, he called our attention to a large calf, the largest It was a beauty. We wanted also to see the cow one we ever saw at the early age of two days old. that produced such fruit. He showed her to us. She was a good conditioned cow, but only of the belonged to a yoke of cows, which, with two ordinary size. He then remarked that the cow stone, plowing green-sward, harrowing the ground, other cows, yoked, had done all his farm work for several years past,-hauling wood, drawing hauling manure, &c., &c. They worked as kindly EDITOR OF NEW ENGLAND FARMER : Sir-In and more actively than oxen, and appeared in as answer to your inquiry in regard to the diet and good plight, and produced as good calves, and weight of my working elephant, I would state gave as much milk as any lazy cows, that did not that he eats on an average one bushel of oats and has no very heavy work to do-such as logging, work. He is quite sure that a small farmer, who one hundred pounds of hay per day, Sundays and &c., had much better keep four cows, and teach all! His weight is 4700 pounds. He will ac- them to work, than to keep two cows only and complish any kind of work set before him, and one yoke of oxen. uses ten times better judgment than three-fourths get more milk, and will be able to perform as The expense is less; he will of the "help" which I am obliged to employ on he will give them extra keeping; and this will much work. Of course, if he works his cows, my farm. Above all things, he is not an eye- enable them to give as much milk whilst they servant. Once set him at work piling wood, work as less well-fed and more idle cows will picking up stones, or any thing else, and you can give. The females of our own species work, and leave him without fear of his playing "old solsome of them work as hard as men; the females, dier" in your absence. Another capital negative other sex in the service of man; why, pray, too, of the horse genus, equal their mates of the quality is, that he dont pick up his duds and should not cows also be made to perform such start for home exactly at six o'clock in the after- operations as may be consistent with their health noon, as many other farmers' "assistants" do. and usefulness in other respects?-Drew's Rural He is willing to labor till sundown, and even laIntelligencer. ter, if work is pressing. On the whole, he is a very honorable, industrious, intelligent and wellbehaved farmer; nevertheless, I cannot conscientiously recommend elephants as the cheapest work- a subscriber wishes to know the best way to kill MR. EDITOR-In the June No. of the Farmer, ies on a farm. They cannot work in cold weath- ticks on sheep, and thinking the remedy used er, and of course would eat themselves up, trunk here preferable to the one you recommend, I give and all, in a single winter.

Truly yours,

P. T. BARNUM.

it.

For the New England Farmer.
HOW TO KILL TICKS.

Take tobacco, about 10 pounds to 100 sheep, P. S.-Do let me improve this opportunity to reduce the liquor if too strong, (about 8 pailsfull and boil in water until the strength is extracted, caution my brother farmers against "believing of liquor to 10 pounds of tobacco is the right proall they read in the papers.' time I read in a newspaper that a sure preventive from the wool. After the lambs have all been About planting portion,) and dip the lambs into it all over, taking them out quickly squeezing out the liquor of the potato rot was to soak the seed potatoes in thus treated, put the old sheep into a close yard water with an ounce of sulphate of copper to the in as small a space as can be and throw the regallon. I tried it, and it did prevent mine from maining liquor over them with a pail. The aprotting and from chitting! After they had been plication should be made in a dry day and immetwo weeks in the ground my man dug them up, every tick without any injury to the sheep, diately after shearing. One application will kill and found them sound inside, but as dry and Most of our sheep-growers consider tobacco benehard as a bone on the outside, with not the ficial when sheep are not infested with ticks.

making them healthy and less liable to disease. stuff into the town, there may be at least a suffiI treat my flock yearly, although I seldom see a ciency raised for home consumption. There needs tick. a change in many particulars, but a few of which I send you a sample of wool taken at random can now be noticed. There is a mistake somefrom a fleece, taken off June 1st, from a two where in respect to there being so few laborers year old buck, with the weight of sheep and fleece. on the land. Is it because farming is not honorSheep weighed before shearing, 117 lbs., fleece; able or profitable? Or is the labor more severe 14 1-16 lbs. of well washed wool, of one years than to drive a truck, or express, or omnibus, in growth only breed, from "Native American" Boston? Is it thought more honorable to measMerino descended from stock imported from ure tape behind the counter, than to preside at a Spain, many years since. If any of your readers can beat this, I should like to hear from them. J. B. PROCTOR. Rutland, Vt., June 11, 1855. REMARKS.-The sample of wool before us very beautiful, and shows, with the above description, to what a degree of perfection our sheep-growers have brought their fleeces as well as mutton. We should feel obliged to Mr. PROCTOR for a dozen samples of wool taken from the various breeds of sheep in his neighborhood, with a brief description of each sample.

For the New England Farmer.

LIGHT FROM THE GRANITE STATE.

is

weekly meeting of a farmers association, or to swing the scythe in a summer's day? Let agriculture take its proper place with the professions of the day, and it will not be thought degrading to be seen in the field with spade in hand.

Ask the retired merchant what he thinks, while busy on his model farm, surrounded with everything to charm his eye, the lowing herds, the waving grain, the well-filled purse. Ask the man of small meads and few acres, with health and a smiling family, who makes the two ends of the year meet; ask him if he would exchange his happy, peaceful fireside, the lovely village church, and the district school, for the turbulent waters of a trading life in the crowded city, where boys are brought up amidst crime and dishonesty, which, without a mighty moral effort, will certainly destroy them.

Again, the farming community ought to be a MR. EDITOR-After living in the Old Bay reading and writing community. There should State the most of my days, and getting my living be books and papers of an agricultural character by farming, I find myself here in the Granite on every farmer's table and a day-book beside State. them to note down every little incident worthy to Looking out over the country at the close of a be remembered. These little scraps can be gathdry season, when vegetation suffered so much, I ered up at any time, sufficient to note down a colfind the agriculture of this portion of the State umn to spread before the readers of an agricultuneeds a reform. The farmers around Boston are ral paper. These ideas and experiences can be well posted up in improved implements, the new matured and practised by others, and we be mumethods of cultivation, and in the progress of ro- tual helps, while we enjoy the luxuries of lite in tation and change of crops. By the middle of all their purity, and find that it is good to give June you can determine almost to a certainty as well as to receive. what the hay crop will be. If it is destined to be light, then corn and millet make up the deficiency, and the root crops will insure a surplus. Not so here; what hay can be cut and stored, must carry the stock through; sometimes there is plenty and to spare, at other times, the stock suffers for the want of fodder that might be secured with a little forethought and labor.

An acre or two of green corn used for soiling would be a great benefit. Then there is millet, which is strictly a summer grain, thought to be as valuable as any other fodder for winter use. By the way, will not some of your correspondents relate their experience in millet raising?"

Now a word of advice to my neighbors and townsmen here in Meredith. Let every farmer and mechanic in this town give his name and money to the postmaster to order and pay for the New England Farmer for one year, and study the improved husbandry of the nineteenth century; then practice the same, and I will venture the assertion that they will find seventy-five per cent. increase of profits.

These thoughts suggest themselves to me while here as a resident. STRANGER.

Meredith Centre, N. H., 1855.

OFFICERS OF SOCIETIES.
Franklin County Agricultural Society.
H. W. CUSHMAN, Bernardston, President.
EDWARD F. RAYMOND, Secretary.

Housatonic Agricultural Society.
HENRY SMITH, of Lee, President.
E. P. WOODWORTH, Gt. Barrington, Treasurer.
J. SEDGWICK, Great Barrington, Secretary.

Rutland County Agricultural Society.
HENRY W. LESTER, Rutland, President.
JOHN L. MARSH, Clarendon, Vice
ALANSON ALLEN, Fairhaven, Presidents.
DANIEL KIMBALL, Rutland, Secretary.
ZENIN HOWE, Castleton, Treasurer.

CURE FOR GARGET.-Joseph Merriam, of Ohio,

The soil of this town is good, and though some parts of it are hard to work, yet this can be met and overcome, by study, toil and perseverance. The manure heap can be increased at least fourfold, the land can be plowed with half the team, states, in the Ohio Farmer, that raw linseed oil, the expense of cultivating crops can be much re- rubbed over the cow's bag, will cure the garget. duced, and instead of bringing so much bread- He says it is a certain remedy.

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