170 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



very ornamental, and a source of great pleasure to many peraons. His expriiments were 

 made upon what Linnicus teniis the Oiseau Noir, our connnon blackbird. He took seve- 

 ral of these birds (which were hatched early in the sja-ing) immediately from the sliell — 

 kept them in a well wanned apartment, and fed them three times a day, upon different kinds 

 of flower seed, from which the husks had been carefully picked. Tiie result was, each bird 

 had the phunage of the flower that would have grown from the seed, if planted in tlie 

 gi-ound. This is a beautiful research, and riclily has the learned Professor been paid. He 

 exhibited to the Royal Society several specimens. His Highness, the Duke of Cambridge, 

 immediately gave orders to the keeper of his aviary, to make experiments on an extensive 

 scale. Professor Auckland's birds were sent by special express to the Queen. 



TABLE TO MEASURE PLOW-WORK. 



The following table may prove serviceable, as ii will enable the farmer to 

 reckon, with exactness, how much work is done — that is, how many miles are 

 traveled over in a day when the work done, as it proceeds, is of a given width. 

 If, for instance, the plowman turns a furrow of seven inches wide, and he can do 

 at that rate an acre a day, traveling fourteen and one-eighth miles, then it fol- 

 lows that with a cultivator or harrow, which operates as it goes, over a breadth 

 of twentj-^-one inches, he ought to get over three acres a day, to say nothing of 

 the time saved in turning once instead of three times ; and this shows the econ- 

 omy of the cultivator over the plow, for it not only enables one man to get over 

 as much ground in a day as three would do with a plow, but it requires only one- 

 third of the horse power and horse feeding. 



Here, in truth, in the substitution of the cultivator for the plow, lies the secret 

 of the so much greater quantity of corn and tobacco being made to the hand than 

 was formerly done within the recollection of many of our readers. If contriv- 

 ances for saving our crops had kept pace with ingenious devices to save labor in 

 making them, much more would have been achieved for Agriculture. In no 

 country does land so much demand capital, or Agriculture so vehemently cry 

 aloud for labor-saving implements, as in America. 



We are confident that while much has been done, as we can affirm, within our 

 own recollection, much more remains to be accomplished. Steam, for instance, 

 has scarcely been made to contribute all it should do to the purposes of the hus- 

 bandman — nothing in comparison with what it has done for commerce, for man- 

 ufactures, aye, and even for that scourge of the world, tear ! But, when the 

 proper books and proper sort of study come to be in use, and prevail in all our 

 coimtry schools, the landed interest, and those who are to represent it, will be- 

 come imbued with a just sense of its importance and its rights ; and these will 

 be reflected and guarded by jiublic legislation, and the public sentiment, until 

 those who appropriate the common treasiure of the people, of which so much is 

 drawn from the agricultural community, will not dare give a dollar for any pro- 

 ject or establishment, without appropriating at least an equal amount for agricul- 

 tural knowledge and discoveries. But what can one journal elTect toward awak- 

 enin<T public sentiment, when even kindred journals deem it not expedient or 

 safe to say a word for the political rights of Agriculture ? Still we will not 

 altogether repress the hope that the faintest whisper, in so good a cause, may 

 swell into the trumpet's blast, and the people of the land become awakened to a 

 sense of their rights and a consciousness of their power. 



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