182 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the light seed will float ; skim it off and throw it away. You 

 will feel that you are wasting a large portion of your seed, but 

 it is very poor economy to sow such seed. Then pour off the 

 water, and with it will be poured off all the fine dust that has 

 collected by cleaning the seed ; and by filling up and pouring 

 off two or three times you will have your seed just as fair and 

 clean as possible. Your seed will be free from the fibre that 

 grew upon it, and it will not be much more than half the circum- 

 ference that it was before ; but you have got a clean article, 

 and you can regulate your machine to sow such seed just exactly 

 as you want to, and get just as much seed in a given space as 

 you desire. 



Mr. Slade. How many do you calculate to drop in a hill ? 



Mr. "Ware. "We don't drop any in hills, we sow in drills. 

 The wheel of my machine is two and a half or three feet in 

 diameter, and in one revolution of that wheel, for carrots, I 

 would drop from 96 to 120 seeds. You can tell just exactly 

 how many seeds you are putting in a certain space. I would 

 like to have a plant as often as once in an inch, but you cannot 

 have the machine distribute the seed just exactly so. Some- 

 times there will be two or three seeds within a half inch, then 

 there may be two inches without any, but if it average about a 

 seed to an inch, that is what you want. You can easily tell how 

 many your machine is casting by turning it one revolution, and 

 catching the seed in a pan and counting them ; then, knowing 

 how many inches there are in the circumference of your wheel, 

 you know just how many seeds you are planting to the foot. In 

 that way, you can so regulate your machine as to plant just the 

 quantity you want, and save the expense of thinning, which, as 

 I said before, is a very laborious and tedious process. It is just 

 so with onions. 



Mr. Hubbard. I hope the gentleman will not get weary. We 

 like to pump from a well that we cannot pump dry. I would 

 like to inquire whether, in saving your seed, you have any refer- 

 ence to the centre stalk ? 



Mr. Ware. No, sir. The centre stalk has altogether the 

 best seed, but there will be some side branches, and those side 

 branches will have centre stalks, too. We save the main centre 

 stalk and the centre stalk of the side branches ; but the smaller 



