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potatoes first, those having red color on them last. The Prince Albert vines 
were totally devoured before the Garnet Chili vines were touched by them, 
though growing side by side. 
EARLY LAMBS. 
_ The following from Queens county, New York, indicates the growing tend- 
ency towards the production of mutton rather than wool: “Wool very low; 
and number of sheep decreasing, and were it not for the high price that lambs 
fetch in New York market early in the spring, sheep raising would be aban- 
doned in this section.”’ 
WHEAT IN NEBRASKA. 
The editor of the Omaha Herald, in printing the gist of the article in the 
October report upon wheat culture, refers to a conversation with a prominent 
farmer, who expressed a belief that Nebraska might expect exemption from the 
prevalent deterioration in yield of wheat lands “ by rotation of crops and keep- 
ing out the weeds, and by ploughing a little deeper each year.” 
This is begging the whole question. These are among the means proposed 
for the increase of production and prosperity of western farmers, which are now 
ignored by the great majority of them in all these States, with little probability 
that Nebraska will prove an exceptional case. The employment of the same 
means would produce universal improvement; but improvement was never yet 
made by a person professing to have already attained perfection. It is useless 
to recommend variety in crops and the ameliorations incident to stock growing 
to farmers who believe that a soil will never wear out if annually scratched to 
the depth of five inches and invariably sown with wheat, which is inevitably 
swamped with weeds before the wheat is half grown. Instead of tares growing 
with the wheat until harvest, it is often the case that the wheat makes a futile 
endeavor to lift up its head among the tares. : 
The Herald states as a remarkable fact, that “ these Nebraska wheat-growing 
soils are so deep that it has been demonstrated in his own experience and that 
of others that soil brought from fifty feet below the surface in digging wells, 
properly prepared and sown to wheat, will raise almost as large a crop of wheat 
and of equal quality with that which is next the sod.” 
It matters little how rich the material that may lie fifty feet below the surface to 
farmers who will not go five inches in that direction. Shallow cultivation, and little 
of that, is the rule in new countries, generally followed till discouragement at the 
results attained leads to changes of proprietorship and systematic farming. 
Statistics of Australia show the same causes and the same effects now operating. 
Wheat averages have there been reduced to twelve bushels per acre, under a 
course of shallow ploughing and weed growing, with seeding annually to wheat. 
If the wheat growers of Nebraska are discarding the slovenly example of the 
west generally, preparing the seed’ bed thoroughly, selecting. seed with care, 
drilling at sufficient width and with such regularity as to admit of cultivating 
and destroying weeds, adopting a judicious system of rotation, and keeping 
stock to utilize hay and straw of the farm and return to the soil the elements 
withdrawn from it, then they may escape the losses of wheat deterioration, but 
not otherwise. ‘These are simple truths, as every good farmer knows, but, with 
very few exceptions, they are not acted upon. Among those exceptions, even in 
the poorer soils of the east, are cases of twenty-four bushels per acre, or double 
the product of the slovenly farming on rich and cheap lands. If these errors 
are avoided in Nebraska, their agricultural papers, unlike those of a neighboring 
State, may not be expected to suggest that if “a pound of batter comes into the 
city before thanksgiving, every clergyman should especially name it as a cause 
of thankfulness.” 
