8 



AGRICULTURE. 



in sheep with the cresylic foot-dip, a cheap 

 oarbolic-acid soap, has proved effectual wher- 

 ever it has been tried. 



Considerable attention has been paid to the 

 testing of new fibrous vegetables, not so much 

 for the making of woven fabrics as for the 

 supply of material for making paper, though 

 both have been considered in the investigations 

 which have taken place. The new demands 

 for paper, not only for books and newspapers, 

 but for collars, and cuffs, for stereotyping, for 

 papier mache goods of all kinds, for boats, the 

 Avails of houses, for roofing and sheathing pur- 

 poses, as a substitute for leather, etc., etc., 

 have quite outrun the old supply of material 

 for it, raised the price of rags so high as to 

 make them too costly for the paper-maker's 

 use, and compelled him to turn to other fibrous 

 materials for the production of this indispen- 

 sable article. Straw and husks answer a very 

 tolerable purpose for binders' boards, and the 

 coarser papers generally, but the paper made 

 from them is too brittle and tender, and often 

 too variable in color, for many purposes. The 

 bamboo, the giant rush or cane of the Southern 

 coast, the large maha or mallow of the Jersey 

 swamps, basswood shavings, and a variety of 

 other articles, have been used. All these will 

 make paper, and most of them paper of good 

 quality ; but the- practical question is, can they 

 be furnished in sufficient quantity, and at a 

 price sufficiently low, to make paper-making 

 profitable? The English paper-makers have 

 been using for some years past a fibrous grass, 

 known as esparto grass, growing upon the 

 barren heath-lands of Spain, and gathered by 

 the poor there. There are two genera of this, 

 the true and the bastard A tocha, known botan- 

 ically as Macrochloa tenacissima, and Lygeutn 

 spartum. This material makes an excellent 

 paper, and the English manufacturers con- 

 sumed, in 1868, 95,000 tons of it. At first it 

 was used in connection with rags, but after 

 a time it was found to make better paper 

 alone ^ than with rags, and the process was 

 materially simplified. The present duty on 

 the esparto grass prohibits its importation 

 here at such a price as would make it profit- 

 able; but an effort, which promises to be 

 successful, has been made to encourage its 

 growth on the waste and sandy lands of the 

 sea-coast in the Southern States, which are 

 now unimproved, but are well adapted to the 

 crop. Meantime, attention has been attracted 

 to a species of grass found abundantly in river- 

 bottoms and marshy lands, especially in the 

 Mississippi Valley. It is called marsh or cord 

 grass, and, by the botanists, Spartina cynosu- 

 roides. It can be mowed in September or 

 October, and brought to a market near at hand 

 for about five dollars a ton. There are no joints 

 in the stalk, and experts pronounce it a better 

 fibre for paper than the esparto. A Mr. Wood- 

 ruff, a paper-manufacturer of Quincy, Illinois, 

 has used many hundred tons of it for making 

 a fine quality of wrapping-paper, and has 



recently changed his mill into a print and 

 book p*aper-mill, in which he purposes using 

 this stock only. On the Pacific coast the 

 manufacturers are beginning to utilize the tule 

 rushes for the same purpose. Still more 

 recently, the paper-makers of the Atlantic 

 States have been making experiments to ascer- 

 tain the practicability of using the okra-plant 

 for paper-making. Its fibre is sufficiently 

 strong to answer the purpose, and it is con- 

 tended that it will yield such immense quan- 

 tities to the acre, that it will prove a profitable 

 crop to cultivate for paper pulp. For this 

 purpose, as well as for the production of fibres 

 for cordage and for bagging, it has been pro- 

 posed to bring cargoes of the textile fibre 

 (Bromelia syhestris) from the Isthmus of 

 Tehuantepec ; or of some of the agaves, from 

 Yucatan, Campeachy, or the Mexican coast. 

 The fibrous portions of these may be easily 

 extracted, and they cost little besides the trans- 

 portation. From some of these sources, or 

 those indicated in previous volumes of the 

 AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPAEDIA, it is probable 

 that an ample supply of material for paper- 

 manufacture will be obtained. 



FISH-CULTURE has made great progress in 

 most of the Eastern States within a few years 

 past, and in every State on the Atlantic slope 

 there are numerous ponds and hatching-houses 

 for the rearing of brook and lake trout, salmon, 

 whitefish, black bass, etc., while the rivers are 

 fast becoming better stocked with the finny 

 tribes. An effort is now making to introduce 

 the system of oyster cultivation which has 

 proved so successful and profitable in France. 

 The whole business of oyster-planting on our 

 coasts has been conducted in a careless, waste- 

 ful, hap-hazard way, which has involved a great 

 loss of the valuable bivalves from overcrowding, 

 silting over, and the needless destruction of mill- 

 ions of the spat or embryo oysters ; and, though 

 the oysters of the American coast are the finest 

 in the world, a few more years of the reckless 

 mismanagement of past years would enhance 

 their value above the means of the common 

 people. Oyster-breeding is a very simple and 

 easily-acquired art, and the oyster is so pro- 

 lific, two million ova being often found in a 

 single female at the breeding-season, that 

 there is no difficulty with ordinary care in ob- 

 taining a largely-remunerative crop. About 

 three years are required to bring the oyster 

 to perfection, but, by planting them in suc- 

 cessive years, there can be always an ample 

 crop each year after the first is ready for the 

 market. 



The culture of the beet for sugar, though not 

 proving so successful as was expected, at Chats- 

 worth, Illinois, owing to the lack of skilled work- 

 men, or some other cause, has been taken up 

 and prosecuted largely and with most admir- 

 able results, in Wisconsin, in California, where 

 it bids fair to attain a great success, and be- 

 come a leading article among the agricultural 

 products of that fertile State, and in New Jer- 



