tried to enrich the earth. No More Guano Battlefields have been rifled of their bare bones, islands in the distant ocean have been scoured for birds' dung; seeds, oils, and entire crops converted into feeding cake, and giving food for the hungry earth; and still the latter remains hungry, and cries out with a louder voice and from a deeper throat every year by year, "Give, give." We take more out of it, and must give it more, or break its back by exhaustion. The weakened earth revenges itself on us for our niggardly feeding by light yields; for in the matter of culture and manure it is emphatically true, as we sow so we shall reap. All the while we have been starving the hungry earth of its proper food. We have been wasting it most lavishly in all directions, and filth, the proper food of the earth, has literally been sent a-begging. We begged the wind and the air to take it, and they reproved our folly by returning it in fiery fevers or the serpent trail of lingering disease. We poured it into the waters and they became black in the face with rage, and the pure water of life was transformed into the slimy draught of death to thousands. We offered it to the fire-god, and he licked it up in anger, and reproved our wasteful folly by scattering its elements broadcast throughout the air we breathe. While all this folly, waste, and wickedness -for it was all three-went on, the mute, long-suffering, ill-used earth looked on, and greatly wondered at the so-called wisdom of its masters. At last the cry arose, to the land with all excrements and waste, the filth of towns, and the dirt of the country. And the earth heard it and rejoiced, and thought that its time-the time when it should be filled with marrow and fatness-had at last Vain hope-fond delusion. Ignorance, prejudice, habit, old saws and modern come. 235 instances, even Mammon with his moneybags, blocked up the way-stood an impregnable barricade between the hungry earth and its natural supplies of food; and the year 1871 finds us wasting manure at the rate probably of £50,000,000 sterling per annum, to the impoverishment of the earth, and the wasting of the very essence alike of vegetable and animal life; for it can never be too often repeated that the food of plants misapplied, wasted, unused, is disease, suffering, death to man; and all this while the wisdom of Parliament is expended upon the ways and means of raising £3,000,000 more revenue, and the struggling taxpayers are crying out that 2d. more Income-tax will break their backs. No wonder there is all this impatience of taxation, all this anxiety to play pitch-and-toss with local and imperial burdens, while we are undermining the energy of the earth itself, the foundation of all our riches, by our wasteful extravagance of our home-made manures. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has just tried to raise a small tax from our matches and tapers; I wish he would try to lay a large one on the waste of good manure. Such a tax, fairly levied and sternly collected, would set all future Chancellors' minds at rest about ways and means for this generation, while it would enrich posterity so much that they would pay all demanded of them without grumbling. Certain it is that only by doubling or trebling the depth of our tilths, and by enriching them by all our waste, can the circle of production be completed, and the strength of the earth, represented by our harvests, restored. The nation that wastes not manure shall not want bread, but there need not be the slightest hesitation in affirming that the very opposite is equally true. GREEN FOOD AND THICK SOWING. HE longer I farm the more I am convinced that the turning-out and roaming-at-large system will come to an end, especially as land gets scarcer and dearer. It is cheaper and better to bring the food to the animal than the animal to the food; because in the latter case he is permitted to trample upon it, excrete upon it, and lie upon it. One of the largest and most successful farmers that I know has always folded his sheep and cut the grass for them-one man, a lad, and a horse chaff-cutter being on the field, there feeding the sheep with green grass chaff, mixed with cake, &c. Although seventyseven he is, and always has been, among the very best root-and-corn growers among my acquaintance, on an area of 1500 acres. Green tares, clover, &c., are all passed through the chaff-cutter for my horses and cattle, the corn ground and roots pulped. One trial will prove the fact, and put money into the pockets of my agricultural friends. Our sheep and lambs are close folded, and have no more food than they clear off. Fold moved twice a-day-one 15-feet iron hurdle on wheels to every five sheep. Lambs have the first bite, and are followed by the ewes to clear it all up. Our green food (tares, clover, or Italian ryegrass), after passing through the chaff-cutter, is spread thinly over an asphalted floor in the cool barn to prevent heating. We must enlarge our stackyards, or so separate our stacks as to leave room for working the corn and hay elevators, worked by a pony --for in one case near me the farmer who bought one of these finds it almost useless to him because his stacks are placed close to each other in the stackyard; the pasture makes a good stackyard as far as room is concerned. The horse-work elevators that carry up the sheaves or hay, and drop them in the centre or any other part of the stack, save of to er save the labour of quite three men, which is very important at hay time or harvest. Machinery grows upon us year after year, therefore our landowners will have to increase the machinery sheds, charging a fair per-centage on their cost. Is not mildew often caused by too thick sowing and early laid crops? I believe that this is one of the true causes. See what takes place. The densely packed mass of plants, weak below, tumbles down flat or twisted in various directions by winds and thunderstorms, and thatches the earth; so that, while rain can pass through the thatch, the wet earth is shaded from the action of the sun and air, and becomes in the like condition to a dark and damp cellar, where, we all know, mildew and Fungi flourish. I have a dark corner in a portion of my house here, where my boots and shoes always mildew, if left long unexposed to light. When crops stand erect, as nearly all mine do this year, and generally, there is free circulation of air and light, and a free evaporation of moisture from the earth. Therefore, although although from the intensely green luxuriance of the corn crops, mildew is often predicted by my visitors, it never comes. Of course, the drainage of land has a good deal to do with this, and so has the absence of trees and fences; but wherever there is a dense closing in of the moist earth, either by too dense, flaggy, vertical, or laid crops, there we have risk of mildew, especially on rich boggy lands, that force a great or rank development of flag. Some very good farmers remove the flag from their cereals. My wheat crops from a bushel per acre, drilled, are all I can desire, and even the 2 pecks per acre are undistinguishable from the rest of the field. Barley 6 pecks, and oats 2 bushels, are enough for me. The Country Gentleman's Magazine 237 M PEEWITS AND THE TURNIP CROP. R RALPH CARR ELLISON, in an article to our contemporary, the Field, points out the services which these beautiful birds render to the turnip crops: The green plover is well-known on account of its delicious eggs, which are taken in great numbers every spring, and sold as an article of luxury. The species is so prolific that it would bear this extensive deprivation of the eggs, if the latter layings were spared, and, above all, if the parent birds themselves were better protected against idle and heartless gunners during the season of reproduction. In very early spring every year these birds return to their breeding haunts with the first mild and sunny weather about the middle of March; they are often driven away again by severe weather, and compelled to seek food along the sea-shores, till near the end of March; but then begin in good earnest their beautiful and graceful aerial tumbling, whilst the males vie with each other in agility, and in the vigorous repetition of the peculiar nuptial strophe into which their cry is then modulated. At the same season there is developed upon the pinion or wrist-joint of each wing of these males, a hard bony wart or excrescence. This represents a truly formidable spur, which is formed on the same joint, in certain tropical or sub-tropical species of the same genus, Vanellus; with this the bearers enforce respect even upon the buzzards, kites, vuitures, and eagles, as they dash at them in the region they inhabit, when those plunderers approach the nesting of these sub-tropical species. In like manner, the hard, angular, and warty wing-joint, or wrist, of the peewit (which is known perhaps to the corbies and other depredators, as the former tilts at them, bringing his wing close to their heads with the whizz of a rocket), compels the birds of prey to watch the assailant, and deters them from scanning the ground for eggs. In this way the plovers are valuable allies to the gamekeeper, for not a crow or magpie will they let tarry in their field or its vicinity. By moonlight they are no less active, vigilant, and clamorous. They are ever on the look-out for reynard, whom they will mob and follow to his no small hindrance, in his midnight prowlings, under a clear moon. It is said that he has a way of snatching one out of the air now and then. by a very sudden spring and snap, after having long hung his head as if half asleep. This, it is reported, has been seen to occur even by daylight on the moors, and it is in nowise incredible. Great numbers of eggs are destroyed in the border counties by the farmers' rollers; yet, despite of all this, the "tewffits," as they are called, are in great plenty. And happy for the turnip-crop that they are so! For no sooner are the young able to fly, than, in company with the old birds (then moulting), they congregate into flocks, and about the beginning or middle of July they all betake themselves to the turnip fields. Here the plants have been thinned out by hoe, and are becoming hopeful and conspicuous to the owner's eye. But, alas! this invaluable provision for cattle and sheep during winter is subject to the attacks of various grubs, the ill-starred progeny of as many different kinds of beetle, or other creeping or flying things. Whole acres of the most promising turnips, already half-covering the mellow ground, so rich with manure, and clean from dilligent tillage, will be seen suddenly to flag, as if the tap-root of every plant had been divided underground by a knife. This is the doing of one kind of grub, which penetrates the fleshy root, and, after half-destroying it. makes it take the form of "fingers-and-toes," and the crop is all but lost. Many insectivorous birds are, at this season of July, active among young turnips, when already almost half-grown as respects the foliage. Thrushes and blackbirds leave our gardens and shrub beries, and resort to this rich feeding-ground and the light extremely feeble! Whilst visiting the Orkneys in July, a few years ago, I was much struck by finding no green plovers present on the cultivated fields, nor any, indeed, elsewhere to be seen. But their place was efficiently supplied in the fields of thriving turnips by the beautiful little ring-dottrels, which I saw running along the drills between the plants (many in every field), and uttering their softly wild whistle of anxiety for their young. It was evident they had led these with them from the adjoining lands, or from the shores, to the plenteous grub-food to be met with on the manured turnip lands. Dottrels, again, are true nocturnal feeders, and no less efficacious than the green plovers against wireworm and countless other pernicious insects. What seems to be needed for the good of agriculture, is a close time for green plovers or peewits from the 1st of March to the 1st of September. for grubs, worms, and insects. But the peewits come in hosts, where their species is not persecuted, and richly do they repay the farmer for his forbearance towards them whilst tending their eggs and helpless young. It is at night that the grubs leave their hidden tracks in the soil and come out above ground. The rooks, thrushes, larks, pipits, &c., are gone into roost; but the plover tribe feed as much by night as in the day-time; they are especially active in late twilight, and in the earliest that precedes the dawn, thus suprising the nocturnal insects that escape other birds. And he who walks in the fields at midnight in summer, when the moon is up, will hear the congregated plovers holding animated conversation in every breadth of turnip land, where they are enjoying both peace and plenty. How admirably is the bird's large, full, orbicular black eye constructed for feeding while the sun is far under the horizon, FOR STORING OF TURNIPS. We trust it will not be ever thus, that farmers will yet come to indulge in prudence more than in procrastination; and they will find the former course by far the most profitable, with reference to the turnip crop especially. OR many years we have called attention bring, as it ought to do, sagacity in the followto the fact, that the storing of turnips ing. The same old lack of care, and is one part of the farmer's laborious duties reprehensible credulous "trust in Proviwhich is very sadly neglected, in Scotland dence," characterize the husbandman in more particularly. It is sad to see how many this particular matter, season after season. valuable roots have been sacrificed for the want of a little foresight-through the desire to get the uttermost ounce added to the weight of the bulbs, or through too implicit reliance, at the end of the year, on that very capricious personage "the Clerk of the Weather." Farmers, as a rule, have failed to take advice from our own columns, and those of contemporary newspapers and magazines; and the bitter regret they express at their want of prudence, when the evil day comes upon them, brings with it no amendment for the future. "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." The sad experience of one year does not Holding the views that we do, we recommend to our readers the following abridgment of an excellent article which appeared in the Scotsman, on the storing of the turnip crop : There is probably no branch of farm management that has been more generally neglected for a considerable number of years than the securing of this crop from the ravages of winter. From the Government statistics for 1870, it Storing Turnips appeared there were in that year 498,932 acres under turnips in Scotland, which is nearly oneninth of the total cultivated area of 4,450,544 acres; while the proportion of green crop to the arable acreage was rather over one-sixth. It is not necessary to adduce statistics to shew that turnips are the most expensive crop the ordinary Scotch farmer grows. In return, they prove an all but indispensable article of animal ́food, and afford great facilities for cleaning the soil periodically. In favourable seasons, many fields of yellow turnips in various districts of Scotland, notably the north-eastern counties, weigh 30 tons an acre. From 20 to 25 tons per acre is a common weight in suitable seasons, both for swedes and yellows, but about 18 tons is about the average crop. It is absolutely necessary, however, that the enterprise and attention which the farmers thus display should not cease when the turnips arrive at maturity. It is not so with other crops. When the grain crops are ripe they are secured from the iron grasp of winter as rapidly as possible, and the same is true with regard to the potato crop. It is true, grain and potatoes are rather more liable to injury by frost, snow, rain, &c., than turnips; but if the experience of the last two winters do not convince most farmers that turnips are liable to suffer severe damage by exposure to the elements in winter, it would be an all but hopeless task to convince them in any other way. The winter of 1869-70 inflicted heavy losses on the turnip fields. The frost came on early-before even a supply of turnips to meet an emergency could be secured on every farmand continued till March, with such severity that, from the absence of snow on the ground, more than one-half of the root crop all over Scotland as it stood at the middle of February was rendered entirely useless. It is within the mark to estimate the area covered by turnips at the middle of February, at fully one-third the acreage under roots during the year. This gives 170,000 acres outstanding in February. Calculating the original value of the turnips at an average of £9 per acre, which is a very moderate estimate, and the loss by frost at a full half, there would have been an actual loss from frost and vermin of about £800,000. These figures proceed on the assumption that the crop was at its full value up to the middle of February. Such was not the case, however. The quality of the bulbs was considerably deteriorated more than a month before that date. Making a reasonable allowance for the early destruction, the total loss on turnips in Scotland 239 from the effects of frost and vermin (frost particularly) in 1869-70, could not have been less than £1,000,000. Last winter, again, matters were little, if any, better. Farmers had more time in the end of the season to store turnips, but, from various causes, the proportion secured was infinitesimally small. Frost appeared early in December, and bound the soil till nearly the middle of February. In some districts, there was a thin coating of snow on the ground during the period of the most intense frost, and this saved the bulbs a little. The loss this year was in some counties even heavier than last. together, it is not too much to say that nearly another million pounds have been lost by the effects of frost on turnips this year. There can be no doubt farmers must suffer in the first place from such losses, and the nation in the second. Al But we have not pointed out all the ways by which loss is occasioned by having turnips exposed during winter. When the frost extends week after week-nay, month after month, as it did in the last two seasons-there is by-andby no alternative but to dig with a pick or mattock, from the frost-bound earth, bulbs frozen frequently to the heart. This is very undesirable work, but it is often, in such cases necessary, in order to supply the daily rations; and the extent to which turnips have hitherto been stored on the majority of farms is rarely sufficient to meet the requirements of a couple of months or so. Dug in such a way, a-third of the turnips is left in the ground, unless great care is exercised; and even with the utmost caution the quantity is diminished, independent of the deterioration in quality, which makes them at this time almost worthless as an article of food. Cattle will not feed on frozen turnips, and for cows in-calf this is a very dangerous diet. Food in this condition often causes abortion in cows, which many stock-owners know from costly experience is a very serious affair. The farmer should see it to be not only his interest, but his duty, to store his turnips just as perseveringly as he does his other crops. Turnips being later than cereals in reaching maturity, there is, of course, little time often between the end of harvest and the severe winter weather to secure this root. They continue to grow late in the season if the weather is mild, and it is deemed imprudent to store them until they are at full maturity; but, as a rule, much more might be done in storing. How this work can best be accomplished, however, is a problem which has scarcely been satisfactorily |