PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 145 



joints will be tight on the inside, and open nearly or quite one- 

 sixteenth of an inch on the outside. Make the croze in each stave 

 so that it will drive on the edge of the bottom of the cistern, 

 water-tight. Nail each stave as it is put on. After hooping it, 

 give the outside a bountiful smearing with coal tar or pitch, and 

 put the cistern in its place, puddling the outside with clay. We 

 have in mind a wooden cistern that has been in the ground for forty 

 years and is good still. 



Information for Emigrants. 



Mr. Joseph JMounts, Columbus, Ind., wants " advice about going 

 farther West, and whether a young, single man, with a small capi- 

 tal, say $800 and a team, would do well by buying stock and feed- 

 ing it on the Illinois prairies. I am a renter here, paying half my 

 crop for the use of the land." 



Mr. Solon Robinson — Then, as soon as you secure and sell your 

 present crop, start for any of the States west of the Mississippi, 

 and buy just as good land, or take up a tract under the Home- 

 stead law, and pay rent no more. With the start you have, you 

 may become an independent farmer, and have land to let yourself 

 in ten years. 



Mr. Russell S. Borden, North Easton, Washington count}^, 

 N. Y. The following is the report of two neighbors, who have 

 lately traversed Northern Missouri : •' No waste land; no springs; 

 scarcely any wells of water; what is used by the inhabitants mostly 

 is cistern water, and from the creeks and rivers; for cattle and 

 other stock they scrape out large holes in the ground, and the 

 rains fill them up. The soil is from three inches to seven or eight 

 inches, of kind of black muck, and then hard pan, of the hardest 

 kind; so hard that when they dig a cistern it needs no cement or 

 brick, as they will not cave in; and they decided that when the 

 soil was worn out it would be a barren country. They said no 

 waste land; they mean by that the soil was all hard land — no 

 swamps; trees a little more forward than here, but grass not so 

 forward." 



Mr. A. M. Swan, Oregon, Holt county. Mo : "I desire to call 

 attention to this portion of Northwestern Missouri. Holt county 

 is mostly rich, rolling prairie. The soil is a deep black loam, very 

 fertile, and overlying a clay sub-soil. All kinds of fruit, except 

 peaches, succeed well. Pears are especially well adapted to this 



[Am. Inst.] J 



