THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



143 



he has always carried out, an J, as natural consequence, lias 

 always ffot higher prices for his beef stock, and a ready mar- 

 ket, even in the dullest times. 



CROPS. 



Although his farm is raaiuly devoted to wheat, jet a consi- 

 derable area of meiidow aud some pastuie has been retained. 

 He now owns about 300 acres of land. The yield of wheat 

 has been 40 busliels tliis year ; and in former seasons, when 

 his neighbours were reaping 8, 10, or 15 bushels, he has had 

 30 and 40. We are informed by liim that there has been 

 no such crop as the present since 1815, either iu yield or 

 quality ; and the absence of weevil is remarkable. A variety 

 of white wheat from Missouri, sown more ihiuly than usual, 

 has yielded 31 bushels to something less than one busliel of 

 seed sown. It headed out a fortnight earlier than the Souie's 

 but ripened later, probably because thinly sown. Mr. John- 

 ston thinks we have been sowing too thickly for fifteen ysars 

 past upon rich land, and there can be no question but that he 

 is right. Still it is better to take a medium course between 

 thick and thin sowing, and thu.s avoi'l, on the one hand, rust, 

 overcrowding, and waste of seed, and, on the other, placing an 

 entire crop at the mercy of insects which may attack it. 



SALT FOR RUST. 

 As a sure preventive to rust, to give stiffness to the straw, 

 and to expedite the ripening of wheat by four or five days, 

 Mr. Johnston sows five bushels of salt to the acre, 

 broadcast, after seeding. He thinks, moreover, that for each 

 of the five bushels cf salt, almost an extra bushel of wheat 

 may be expected. 



SIZE OF TILES FOR MAINS AND LATERALS. 



A too common error with improving farmers is that of using 

 too small tile for main drains, and too large for laterals. 

 Those accustomed to the roomy conduits of ordinary stone 

 drains, suppose that nothing less than a three inch bore will 

 conduct the drainage from the surface into the mains, aud 

 curiously enough the same persons, unmindful of the large 

 area drained by each system of laterals, err in using mains 

 but little larger in bore than the latter. If any are willing to 

 look into the results of the drainage on our Central Park, the 

 most stupendous work of the kind in this country, aud one of 

 the best conducted, they will find that the one aud-a-half inch 

 and two-inch tiles there used for laterals do not run full even 

 after the most violent and protracted drains, and yet from a 

 single " system" of twelve acres, the discharge after a recent 

 rain was at the rate of 3,000 gallons per hour. This error of 

 using too large tile Mr. Johnston fell into, and now that he has 

 learned better alter a twenty years' experience, he cautions 

 his brother farmers against using larger than two-inch tile 

 for laterals. For mains each farmer must provide as the quan- 

 tity of water to be conducted is greater or less. In many cases 

 Mr. Johnston has used two rows of four-inch, in others six- 

 inch, and in one, semi-circles of eleven inches, one at top and 

 one at bottom, making a pipe nine inches bore to discharge 

 water. At first he had many to take up and replace with large 

 pipe to secure a complete discharge. Main drains he makes 

 six to eight inches deeper than those emptying into them — not 

 with an abrupt shoulder, but leveled up, so that the descent 

 may take place gradually in the length of two tiles — 29 inches 

 — and always giving the laterals a slight sidewise direction at 

 the end, so that their water will be discharged down stream into 

 the mains. 



Another error he at first fell into was, in having too many 

 drains on lowlands and not enough on the upperland ; thus 



seeking to carry off tlie effect, while the cause— the out-crop- 

 ping springs on the hill-side— remained untouched. Where 

 the source of the water is most abundant, the means (or re- 

 moving it should most abundantly be furnished. Rain-water 

 falls on hills, sinks to an impervious stratum, along which it 

 runs until it either finds a porous section through which it can 

 fall to a lower level, or not finding such continues on the hard 

 bottom to the side of the hUl, where it crops out in the form 

 of a spring. If this spring water is suffered to run down hill, 

 it washes the hill-side more or less, aud coming to the low- 

 land, sinks as far as it may into the soil, makes it sodden, and 

 produces bad effects. To drain effectually, then, we must cut 

 off the supply above and fewer drains will be necessary below. 

 Here is the whole s?cret of the tiling, and here we see why so 

 much money is spent to so little purpose by those who think 

 that they should only drain the wet lowland. Appearances 

 are deceitful, and we should not suppose that a seemingly dry 

 nplaud is really dry. 



FEEDING CATTLE AND SHEEP.* 



A word as to this most important subject. On poor lands, 

 good craps are got by the use of much manure. This all 

 know. But do they know as well that all manure is not 

 equally good ? that a cord of it that has been leached by 

 drenching rains throughout fall aud winter, and that has been 

 shone upon by the sun through a hundred hot days, has lost 

 the greatest part of its efficacy ? That the rivulets of brown 

 liquor that run from the barn-yard into the public road will 

 make more wheat than the brown-washed straw which re- 

 mains ? And that, be manure ever so well cared for, its value 

 may be increased at will by the food given to the animals that 

 make it? If they don't, Mr. Johnston does; and so, instead 

 of freezing his stock until they are almost in arliculo mortis, 

 and starving them on dry stalks and refuse hay until the bones 

 well nigh pierce the skin, he has comfortable sheds and deeply- 

 littered yards for his cattle, and feeds them well at regular in- 

 tervals with sweet hay, oilcake, bean-meal, aud grain. The 

 result — but what other could you expect ? — is that iu spring 

 they are in store condition ; he loses none, has no disease 

 among them, saves a large quantity of such manure that one 

 cord of it will bring more wheat or corn than four of ordinary 

 dung, and he grows rich. Reader, if you desire to be a good 

 farmer, go and do likewise ! 



CARE OF SHEEP. 



Mr. Johnston bought thirty Leicesters one fall, put them 

 in his yards, fed them each with twelve ounces of oil-meal with 

 wheat-straw, and no hay all winter. In spring he sheared 

 from them 5 lbs. of wool each, pastured them all summer, 

 kept them over until the following February, and sold them 

 for nine dollars and twenty cents each. They cose him two 

 dollars. Sheep fed with oilcake meal or grain eat but little 

 salt, make richer manure, more wool, and more carcass. He 

 gives usually one pound of oil-meal when feeding with straw, 

 and half-a-pound with hay. If there should be any signs of 

 foot-rot in the flock, he pares the hoof and rubs into the sores 

 a salve of blue vitriol and lard. In very hot weather he 

 mixes tar with the salve, to make it adhere. Sheep are never 

 let out of the yards in winter, but to the yard they have free 

 access at all times from the low, open sheds, and every part of 

 the shed and yard is deeply bedded with clean straw. The 

 shepherd, instead of wading through a slough worse than that 

 described by Bunyan, walks on a soft bed of straw, so clean 

 at any time as not to soil the white fleece of the cleanest 

 Leicester. — New York Weekly Tribune. 



AIR DRAINAGE. 



The essential elements of vegetable production that are 

 more or less under artificial control are three — earth, air, 

 and water : and it may be affirmed that a proper regulation 

 of these three elements is all that is necessary iu the vast 

 proportion of farms within the temperate zone. 



The earth must be alternately and thoroughly air-soaked 

 and water-soaked ; and it will ultimately be found that the 

 one greatest use of the soil is to decompose the air, the 



oxygen becoming fixed by oxidisable substances, and the 

 nitrogen absorbed by the living plants. Hence, drainage is 

 so necessary even in dry land, not by promoting the dis- 

 charge of water pec se, but by promoting the admission of 

 air, which must rush iu and till the soil that the water 

 is leaving immediately, and with the same vilocitj', and in 

 the same volume. 

 But grautiKg these premises, it may be truly alleged that 



