60 [Senate 



things which the scythe and the mower had taken away. In the 

 neighborhood of Rochester, it is found to be good economy to keep 

 a cow on an acre of ground the year round. I expect to witness far 

 greater improvements in the production of suitable vegetables, and 

 in changing them into milk that abounds in butter and cheese, than 

 in the extraction of whatever butter and cheese good or poor milk 

 may contain. Without good milk, and a plenty of it, the hopes of 

 the dairyman must be small, whatever his skill in separating whey 

 from curd, and butter milk from butter. 



In connection with the dairy business, there are some farmers who 

 contrive to make a good deal of pork, and at a cheap rate. One of 

 the best establishments of the kind which I have seen, is that of Mr. 

 Moses Ames, of Rutland, Jefferson county. His is a cheese dairy. 

 The whey and other slop is conveyed in pump-logs under ground 

 some fifteen or twenty rods into a large vat, adjoining an apparatus 

 for cooking potatoes, peas, barley and other food for swine. These 

 articles are thoroughly mixed with the whey before they are fed. By 

 means of the pump-logs and a declivity, the pi^^^w with its offensive 

 odor is far removed from the milk-house and dwelling, without the 

 great labor of carrying slops. By judiciously mixing potatoes with 

 more concentrated and hearty food, as well as by cooking them, Mr. 

 A. is able to use all the elements of pork given to his pigs to the 

 very best advantage. It is worthy of remark that Mr. A. has a well 

 filled agricultural library ; and makes money by scientific book farm- 

 ing. Indeed, Jefferson county contains many excellent and thorough 

 tillers of the soil, who have maintained their County Agricultural 

 Society since its first organization in 1818 ; and have a large and 

 commodious hall erected at a considerable expense for agricultural 

 meetings, and the display of domestic manufactures at their annual 

 fairs. I was agreeably disappointed to witness the great wheat 

 growing capabilities of the Black River valley. Its lime stone strata 

 abound in organic remains, which in one locality — near Copenhagen, 

 in Lewis county — are 500 feet in thickness, as they are exposed from 

 the bottom of a deep gulf, to the level of the upper stratum. I have 

 seen no where else so handsome wheat as was exhibited at the fair 

 in Watertovvn, and I have no doubt that the abundance of the re- 

 mains of marine animals in the rocks that form the soil, have a direct 

 bearing on its production of this flesh-forming plant. 



The study of agricultural geology will enable practical farmers to 



