California Agriculturist and Live Stock Journal. 



We have found that the Berkshire and 

 Essex make an excplleut cross for feeding 

 purposes. As a principle, I do not consider 

 it advisable to cross the imi>roved Berkshire 

 with any other on their own account, but 

 prefer rather to keep that breed .distinct and 

 up to the mark by occasionally renewing with 

 B, foreign blood of its own kind. By foreign 

 blood I mean that of a distant or unrelated 

 family. They are a standard breed, very 

 near perfection in themselves, possessing 

 qualities that caunot be much improved upon 

 without affecting the combination that con- 

 stitutes the Berkshire and stamp them with a 

 character whciUy their own, and which only 

 requires to be kept up to the ideal of their 

 stylo and perfection to satisfy the require- 

 ments of almost every class, condition and 

 locality. The true well-bred Berkshire has 

 the stamp of the thoroughbred, and possesses 

 the merits required for its purpose, and great 

 pains should be taken to perpetuate the purity 

 of that blood. However, when it is necessary 

 or advisable to cross them (for the reason be- 

 fore given) it should be made with the Essex 

 whenever practicable. The result of a single 

 cross will always give satisfaction, the pro- 

 duce being such as will ff-ed quick and mature 

 sooner than the pure-bred Berkshire, and the 

 pork is second to none that goes to market. 

 The general style and appearance of the ani- 

 mals will be similar, except in the markings; 

 some will be more or less spotted, some 

 marked like the Berkshire, some partially 

 marked, and some all black. The cross con- 

 tinued upon itself will soon lose its identity 

 witli either breed, and eventually will result 

 in a lot of mongrels. — Ex. 



Keep Them F.4.T. — A practical farmer, in 

 communicating his views in the columns of 

 one of our exchanges, says: Keep your hogs 

 fat. The good farmer gives all his young 

 stock a good fat start in life, because he knows 

 it always takes twice or thrice as much to 

 feed a i^oor horse, cow, or hog, as it does one 

 in good condition. It ought never to be ne- 

 cessary to keej) "killing hogs" in the "fat- 

 tening pen" longer than a week or ten days — 

 just long enough to harden their fat with 

 grain. The hogs ought to be fat to begin 

 with. In fact, the good farmer never has a 

 pour animal of any kind on his place. It 

 pays well to push young pigs from the word 

 "go" — that is, as soon as they are able to 

 crack corn. We knew once a Utter of thir- 

 teen, half Beskshires, dropped in February, 

 that under this plan, %vithout going into the 

 fattouiug pen at all, eleven months later aver- 

 aged 17-5 pounds net meat — total 2,276 pounds 

 — and the heaviest one was a " runt" at the 

 start. 



A New Hog Disease. — A Greenville, Ohio, 

 correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette says: 

 The pigs in our settlement are having a new 

 and strange disease commencing in the head 

 and nose. Symptoms: First, the nose swells, 

 the swelling lasting a few days. Then the 

 nose and head get sore. The sores appear to 

 be of an eating nature. They get larger, and 

 spread over the pig till dead. We have lost 

 over one hundred, and saved perhaps six or 

 eight out of all that took the disease. But 

 even the saved ones are of but little account. 



The saying "Excuse haste and a bad pen" 

 has been attributed to a pig who ran away 

 from home. 



When a hog roots in a snow bank its nose 

 knows snows. 



Gems. — Indifference to the welfare of our 

 country is a crime ; but if our country is re- 

 duced to a condition in which the bad are 

 preferred to the good, the foolish to the wise, 

 hardly any catastrophe is to be deprecated or 

 Disposed that may shake them from their 

 places. 



Co 



Heading Off Borers. 



B. HUBBARD, writing to the Rural 



New Yorker on the subject of borers 



in peach trees, says: 



I will not waste time to refer to the 

 various expedients to which I have resorted, 

 but hasten to state that at the introduction of 

 Hale's early peach I procured fifteen one-year 

 old budded trees, took extra paius with them, 

 and discovered the next season that the borers 

 had commenced their depredations. I worked 

 at them, knife in hand, for several years, un- 

 til I had mutilated them very badly. I began 

 to look about for some more effectual remedy. 

 I prepared boxes of inch boai'ds, eleven inches 

 square, ten inches wide; put one around each 

 tree; filled each with damp, leached ashes, 

 pounded down slightly; smoothed the surface 

 nicely, with a damp shovel, quite up to the 

 trunk, and called the work finished. This 

 was the last trouble I experienced with my 

 fifteen trees, and to my mind this is an effect- 

 ual remedy. The beetle cannot puncture the 

 bark at that distance from the ground, it be- 

 ing dry and hard, and being no ingress or 

 egress, reproduction must cease, of course. 



N. B. — This wooden structure will decay 

 after a time. I suu'gest instead of boards use 

 bricks, which are easily placed about the ti'ees, 

 need no mortar, as the pressure is very slight, 

 and the material indestructible. The expense 

 will be trifling compared with refitting occa- 

 sionally with wood. I claim not that this 

 remedy is infallible; but this I do know, that 

 for a series of years in my experience it has 

 proved an entire success, and I think from its 

 simplicity no one should be so skeptical as to 

 fail to make the experiment. I speak some- 

 what positively, but I apprehend my zeal is 

 according to my knowledge. 



[If the trunks of the trees are «haded from 

 the sun with boards it will answer the same 

 purposes. — Eds.] 



■■ • »■ 



Lime fok Apple Tkees. — A successful pom- 

 ologist of New Jersey writes the New York 

 Heriihl that he once noticed that a tree stand- 

 ing in the immediate vicinity of his dwelling 

 had all at once 2rat forth with renewed energy 

 and he was at a loss for some time to define 

 the cause. On examination he found that a 

 quantity of lime, which had accidentally been 

 spilled, and rendered M'orthless by becoming 

 mixed with the refuse on the stable floor, had 

 been thrown at the foot of and around the 

 tree, and to this, as the principal cause, he 

 immediately accredited the revivement and 

 renewed fructification of the tree. Taking 

 the hint from the incident, he purchased 

 twelve casks of lime, and appUed half a bushel 

 to each of the trees in his orchard, and found 

 that it produced immediate beneficial rasults. 

 Not the health of the tree only but the quality 

 of the fruit also was greatly improved. The 

 Ilcrald adds that it has known some farmers 

 to make it a regular practice for a succession 

 of years to throw caustic lime around their 

 ajjple trees in the spring and summer. 



In our own experience on the farm we 

 found that leached ashes worked about the 

 same result as given above. A pear 

 tree close by a leach grew twice as rapidly as 

 one a few rods away. — Ohio Farmer. 



<"•-• 



The Black Peppee. — The two specimens of 

 the black pepper tree planted in the Court- 

 house yard a year old, with a view of testing 

 its adaptability to this climate, made a rapid 

 growth last summer, but the past winter was 

 unusually heavy, and the frost killed most of 

 the leaves and tips of the twigs. Enough is 

 determined, however, to show that black pep- 

 per can be produced here in any desired 

 amount, and that it is capable of becoming an 

 article of export. The tree is an evergreen, 

 and has a strong resemblance to some of the 

 varieties of acacia. — Tulare Times. 



Value or Evebokeens Among Fbuit Teees. 

 A well-grown evergreen tree gives off continu- 

 ally an exodium of warmth and moisture that 

 reaches a distance of its area in hight; and 

 when tree planters advocate shelter belts, 

 Bun-ounding a trace of orchard fifty or more 

 acres, when the influehce of such belt can 

 only trace a distance of the hight of the trees 

 in said belt, they do that which will prove of 

 little value. To ameliorate climate, to assist 

 in prevention of injury against extreme clim- 

 ate, to assist in prevention of injury against 

 extreme climatic cold in winter aud of the 

 frosting of the germ bud of fruit in tlie 

 spring, all orchards should have planted, in 

 and among them indiscriminately, evergreen 

 trees at chstanees each of not more than 150 

 feet apart. Such a course pursued will give 

 health to the tree, and bo productive of more 

 regular and uniform crops of fruit. At all 

 events, it is worth the trial, and we shall be 

 glad if our readers can inform us of practical 

 experiments on the subject. — Scientijic Ameri- 

 can. 



Ripening Feiht. — Acting upon the princi- 

 pal that removal of the earth immediately 

 surrounding the roots increases their activity 

 and accelerates the maturing of all parts of 

 the plant, including the fruit, Mr. Stall re- 

 moved the earth about an early pear tree eight 

 weeks before the normal period of rijiening, 

 for a space of thirteen to fifteen feet in diam- 

 eter, and to such an extent as to leave a depth 

 of earth over the roots of only about two to 

 four inches, which could be thoroughly 

 warmed by the sun. He was surprised not 

 only by the ripening of the fruit in the mid- 

 dle of July, but also by its superior juiciness 

 and flavor. In another experiment the re- 

 moval of the earth from the north side of a 

 tree alone caused the fruit on that side to 

 ripen several days earlier than that on the 

 south side. Frequent watering was of course 

 necessary in the above exiJeriments. — Vine- 

 yard Gazette. 



The cranberry is cultivated in Wisconsin 

 and some of the other Western States on a 

 pretty large scale, by simply building dikes 

 for keeping out sui-i^'us water from the 

 swamps on the margin of lakes. It is claimed 

 that a capital of only twenty dollars per acre 

 is requirud for successful cultivation of the 

 cranberry there, while, in New England, it 

 often costs from two to three huudi'cd dollars 

 per acre. Several gentlemen interested in the 

 cultivation of this fruit at the West have lately 

 visited Eastern capitalists and a meeting for 

 discussing the subject has been held in Husio 

 Hall, Boston. 



Market-Gardening In the Rural Dis- 

 tricts. 



The census often shows the drift of farm- 

 life more accurately than any partiid observa- 

 tion, however minute. It is quite clear, from 

 the returns already examined, that there is a 

 decrease in the amnuut of live-stock in the 

 New England and Middle States during the 

 past decade, and likewise a decrease in the 

 yield of stable grains, while there will be 

 shown a large increase in the crops of vegeta- 

 bles aud in garden products. This shows 

 pretty conclusively that grain-farming and 

 live-stock raising, does not pay so well as 

 some other branches of farming. The city 

 and village population has increased, and the 

 farmers in the immediate vicinity of these 

 large towns are turning their attention more 

 to supplying their daily wants. They can sell 

 l^otatoes and turnips every day in the year if 

 they have them, aud garden products al- 

 through the summer and fall. There is, how- 

 ever, a brisk demand for podltry, eggs, milk, 

 calves, lambs, and swine, and they very pro- 

 perly raise what the market demands. 



How much does a fool generally weigh? 

 simple ton. 



A 



