162 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



wine to stimulate and keep up strength. If they recover fowls are 

 quite liable to a return of the disease on the approach of autumn 

 and winter weather; generally, a dose of pepper and a little rhu- 

 barb relieves them, Roupy fowls are very apt with me to be 

 lousey. Keep off the lice, feed generously, supply plenty of abso- 

 lutely pure water, lime, ashes, or dust, gravel, bones, shells, &c., 

 and a dry airy roost free from draughts, and roup and gapes will 

 scarce ever molest your fowls. 



Couch Grass. 



Dr. James Johnson, Greenwich, Washington Co., N. Y. : "I find 

 my farm covered with quack or couch grass. I have tried faith- 

 fully to uproot this species of quackery, but like its congener, the 

 more I disturb it the more it grows. Can the Farmers' Club 

 inform me how I can readily exterminate the foul weed, or, what 

 is better, how it may be utilized ?" 



Mr. John G. Bergen said the only way to get rid of quack grass 

 was by thorough and frequent cultivation. Several other mem- 

 bers, however, declared that it could be thoroughly subdued by 

 sowing the laud with buckwheat two or three times a year and 

 plowing the green crop. 



Mr. S. Edwards Todd said that large fields of couch grass, com- 

 monly called quack, or quaking grass, are destroyed by plowing, 

 harrowing and raking the soil in hot weather. The best way is to 

 plow the ground deep in hot weather, and either summer fallow 

 it, or sow peas, or buckwheat, or Indian corn, and after the crop 

 has been removed in the fall, go over the ground every two weeks, 

 till winter, with a cultivator or gang plow having sharp teeth, 

 which will cut ofi' all the grass about two inches below the sur- 

 face of the ground. The next season plant Indian corn or summer 

 fallow. If the work is done thoroughly, the extermination may 

 be completed in two seasons. . If the harrowing and cultivating is 

 half performed, there will be as much grass at the end of two sea- 

 sons as there was when the extermination first began. 



Timothy — When to Cut. 

 Mr. J. W. Shepard, Ponn Yan, N. Y., says his cattle "are una- 

 nimously in ftivor of all kinds of grass being cut before maturity. 

 Is the verdict of this jury to be ignored because they are governed 

 by unerring instinct rather than the frequently erring reason of 

 man ? Why did my horses give this ripe hay a contemptuous toss 



