80 YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 



His average crops of wheat are now forty-six to forty-eight 

 bushels per acre ; of oats, not far short of ninety ; of barley, 

 not more than fifty. His cattle are fed on sparred floors, with- 

 out bedding of any kind all their food cut and cooked. Ho 

 says that he don't use straw more generally in feeding because 

 it is not naturally in condition to be very nutritive ; but when 

 cooked, he states that every hundred pounds of straw is shown 

 to contain the equivalent of eighteen and a half pounds of oil. 

 Straw for manure is worth to him only two dollars thirty-three 

 cents per ton, while for fodder it is worth five dollars ; and, as 

 he raises about two tons of straw per acre, this difference is 

 of enough consequence to him almost to turn the scale between 

 loss and profit upon each acre under a grain crop. 



Mr. M.'s cooking apparatus consists of'" a number of cast-iron 

 pans, or coppers, each capable of containing 250 gallons," set in 

 brick-work, so as to stand level with the floor, and heated by 

 waste steam, from the engi ne, admitted into a four-inch space 

 about them. The fodder is cut to quarter-inch length, at a cost 

 of from 50 cents a ton for cutting hay by steam to $1 per ton 

 for straw. In feeding roots, they are first cut by machine, and 

 then " mixed in the manger with the warm steamed chaff." 



As to rotation of crops, Mr. Mechi, in common with most of 

 the " high farmers " whom tTie speaker had rnet, apparently re 

 garded this as altogether a secondary consideration after a farm 

 once attains a certain pitch of productiveness. 



The difficulty which high-farming is most puzzled to over 

 come is, the "laying" or lodging of the crop. The moment 

 the condition of the land reaches a certain point, its yield can 

 be no farther increased, because the amount of soluble silica 

 to glaze the straw appears to fail, and the risk from this cause, 

 together with the difficulty of keeping the ground clean, pre 

 sents an obstacle nearly or quite insurpassable. 



An extra lecture was given in the evening, by Mr. Quinby, 

 on Bee-Keeping. In the first place he proceeded to answer the 

 Yankee's characteristic question, " Will it pay ?" By a very 



