358 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE.. 



■est way to bring up a run-down farm — one that any and every man can use — is 

 by creen manuring. Suppose your farm is too poor for clover, and grass makes 

 only a feeble growth : put on it a manural crop that will grow, such as rye, turn 

 this under with your plough, and you can then raise something better ; keep feed- 

 ino- your soil with everything your shovel and yonr team can command — ashes, 

 leached ashes, if you can get them by drawing them within five miles, muck, 

 marl, anything that will bring a green mantle over your fields. Soon you can 

 ;set the clover-pump to work pumping up to the surface the inexhaustible re- 

 sources of your subsoil. If an animal dies, don't stop to bewail your luck and 

 exclaim, "evrything goes to the dogs on my farm!" Don't send it to the 

 dogs at all, but compost it with muck or even soil, and thus secure a most valu- 

 able manure. Samson performed a wonder by taking honey from the dead car- 

 <cass of a lion ; outdo that wonder by extracting wheat from the carcass of your 

 dead cow. Pick up all tlie bones you can find, put them under cover and mix 

 with them two or tiiree times their bulk of ashes from your kitchen ; moisten 

 them with enough water so that the potash may act on the gelatin of the bones, 

 stir them over once a week, and in a month or two you will find the bones so 

 tender that you can cut and crush them with a blow of your shovel; beat the 

 Avhole into a powdery mass, and you will have a manure better than the aver- 

 age of the superphosphates which you feel too poor to buy. Give a hand full 

 ■of this to each hill of corn and see how it will wave its banner of green, and 

 pour into your basket the golden ears of corn ! 



But in bringing your soil into good condition, do not neglect green manuring; 

 let every wind that blows over your fields bring them a blessing in the shape of 

 atmospheric plant food. Do all these things patiently and hopefully, without 

 urging your soil beyond what it can do, and you will yet out of the fullness of 

 •a grateful heart exclaim, " bless God for the farm ! " 



ELECTRICAL COXDUCTIOIN'. 



BY R. C. KEDZIE. 



In the Farmers' Institutes of last winter I spoke of lightning-rods, their 

 forms and construction, and endeavored to tell farmers how they could put up 

 their own rods with a very large saving of expense. I stated that the highly 

 artificial forms so generally in use, such as fluted rods, wire ropes, flat strips, 

 ■etc., were not essential features of a good rod, and that increase of surface gave 

 no increase of conducting power. On this last statement a warm discussion 

 arose, and Prof. Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was quoted 

 as authority for the doctrine of conduction of electricity of high tension at the 

 surface. Out of this came the correspondence and investigation which I now 

 present to you, beginning with the letters of Prof. Henry, which he has kindly 

 permitted me to use. 



Prof. Henry's letters, with his final corrections, are as follows: 



Smithsonian Institution, 

 Wosliington, March 11, 1S76. 



Dear Sir :— In answer to your letter of 7th inst. I have to say that the dis- 

 crepancy which exists as to the question whether electricity passes at the surface 



