312 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



requiring superior skill and diligence, as many suppose, the reverse is the fact. 

 The owner, who should always be the head manager of the southern planta- 

 tion, should be able not only to teach the soldier how to go through the man- 

 ual exercise, but he must have the skill and the firmness, the science and the 

 tact, of the general, to combine and command. He has need to be a practical 

 chemist and a manufacturer, as well as a practical planter. The public mind 

 is in a fog on tnis subject. The management of a northern farm lies in a nut- 

 shell — a cow-bell may be heard l>om one side of it to the other. A southern 

 cotton or rice or sugar plantation is a wide domain, and he who makes the most 

 of it must know something of hydraulics, of civil engineering, of complicated 

 machinery, of vegetable chemistry, and of physic and metaphysics in thje bar- 

 gain I But enough of this, too, for the present — let us back to our theme, or 

 we shall never be done Avith this buttermilk breakfast. 



We profess to hold in great contempt all mere statements of facts and re- 

 sults, without affording the means of applying them or of drawing some useful 

 and practical conclusions — as premiums are given by Societies for big crops 

 and fat hogs, without examination or means furnished for exactly understand- 

 ing the means to the end. Of what avail to say, for example, that Mr. Hall 

 makes a certain quantity of hay or corn on the acre, or a certain quantity of 

 butter, or that he kills a certain amount of pork, without affording the means 

 to judge of the profits, by showing the value of his investment in land, and 

 of the food employed, and the marketable price of the commodities produced 

 and for sale, &c. ? So we proceed to slate that, at the time referred lo, hay 

 was worth $7 at his barn-door, corn about 50 cents, oats 33, barley 52 — the 

 last generally about 50, and Mr. H. thought it worth that for food for hogs. 

 He thinks the relative value of corn, barley, and oats, as food, bears about 

 the same proportion they do lo each other in u-eight ; the weight of corn 

 being 56 to 60 — which we suppose to be somewhat heavier than southern 

 corn — barley 48, and oats 32. These are the standard weights. The real 

 weight of oats is usually here from 30 to 32. Our impression is that mount- 

 ain oats — Alleghany oats, for example— go up usually to 40 pounds to the bushel ; 

 " Eastern Shore" oats, 28. For various grains, in many States, there is no stand- 

 ard weight. Better would it be to sell everything, where it is possible, by loeight 

 than by measure ; and better for the farmer, and the character of any market, 

 that the standard of quality (flour, for instance) should always be kept high, and 

 lionestly preserved. 



At Quebec, meats are nearly all sold by women, sitting in carts, in a square 

 outside the market, and the purchaser pays, with confidence, according to small 

 gashes cut in the grain of the meat — as thus, IX. for nine pounds. You turn over 

 the pieces, into which the meat is all ready cut up, until you find one bearing as 

 near as may be the mark of the weight you want : and, when you find these Utile 

 gashes, you pay the old woman accordingly; and we were told that such a thing 

 as cheatery or deception was almost unheard of. Well, says the reader, this was 

 a most unconscionable breakfast, to last so long. 



Inasmuch, then, as we have yet to speak more particularly of his butter — its 

 manufacture, sending to market, and sale; also, the facilities the railroad affords 

 to agriculturists, so much beyond what is enjoyed in the South ; also, of the for- 

 malities of sending to market and getting account sales, together with the price 

 of lands in the neighborhood — we must here break off, and finish wiih some re 

 marks on these topics in our next number, if not "crowded out.'' 

 (648) 



