®l)c Jarincr's itlontI)li) bisitor. 



159 



rn ly \('itiiire <<t rely nilli iiiiicli cerlnii/ty, or 

 ^iveii iiiii(;ii eiiciiiiiii^eiiiuiit evmi to aiiu|it sudi 

 xit-iiiis ui! you Mieiitiojj. 



J'liK luMi(jiii:.ss lefeired lo is ;i suellinf; or oii- 

 I.iii.'i'Mi(.iu ii|Min llie liiiiil leys lictween ilii; ankle 

 jojjit iiiid ilie luioK Till; laiiieiK-'i-s is not uiicoiii- 

 riioii, iiikI is ijeiiurally cuntini^d (o yoiiiij; horses. 

 Ill the first siHjtes the aniiiiiil cotiiiiioiily is very 

 lame, hut after the iiitlaiiiiiiatioii I'oriiis a crisis, he 

 beijnis to get hetter, and in every case with 

 which I have beeti acqiuiiiited, has in a few years 

 got well ot the lameness, if left to itself. I have 

 known great iiijiiiy done to horses by resorting 

 to operations in siieli eases, hut Inwe never known 

 it result in any good. The hnnch above the hoof 

 will remain after the aniniul pets well of the 

 lameness, having formed a callous or bony snb- 

 siaiicc. This will nut injure the horse for labor 

 —and here I will remark that when these bunch- 

 es come upon the Ai';i(/yee/, there is but very litlle 

 danger to apprehend permanent lameness from 

 tliem. The horse ought to be shod often behind, 

 and the hools well pared at the toe, and particu- 

 lar care should be taken 10 prevent interlering. 

 The bunches aie apt to project in so that the 

 horse will strike wlien lie travels. I knew a 

 horse continually lame from this cause, when 

 the owners supposed bis lameness proceeded 

 from the bunches. This same horse, when prop- 

 erly shod, was soon well. 



The best remedy 1 have ever found is spirits of 

 turpentine and lamp oil, equal parts, applied to 

 the hunches night and morning, well riiblied into 

 tlie hair and around the hoof. This will reduce 

 the inflammation, and promote the circulation of 

 the blood anil olht-r fluids. H. A. P. 



It'inthrop, Julti Sth, 1847. 



Improvemeut of Wet Land. 



The Mark J.ane Express gives an account of 

 the impiovements made on the farm of Lord 

 Stairs, in Wigtownshire. One part was drained, 

 siilisuiled, limed and thoroughly pulverized and 

 then produced 40 bushels of wheat to the acre, 

 where only 12 were raised before; and carrots, 

 turnips, and mangel-wiirlzel on the laud averag- 

 ed 23 tons to the acre. A morass, a part of which 

 had been cut over lor peat for 30 years, was 

 drained, pared, limed, liiirned, tiianiired and 

 ploughed and sown to oat.s. Crop, 40 bushels to 

 the acre. Next ye.n' lop dressed with gravel and 

 sand, limed, manured, ploughed and two acres 

 sowed to turnips, D.ile's Hybird ; some of them 

 weighed 15 lbs. each. The croji was 40 Ions 

 per Scotch ncre. [4 Scotch are 5 English. ] — 

 Seven acres planted to potatoes produced 576 

 bushels per acre. Previous to imiu-ovement IG 

 acres of this land was barely siiflicient to pas- 

 ture two cows and their calves. 



MAKtNo Brick by MACHtNERT — A strikirif; ev ■ 

 idence of I he imlue nf American genius in the inven- 

 tion of lahor-snvins; machines. In one yard, near 

 BiiSloii, ibi-re are now at work twenty machines, 

 of which ten are at work one day and the other 

 ten on the ne.\t. These are opHriited each by 

 four men. A steam engine is employed to pre- 

 pare the clay. This cstaMi-binent has made 

 one hniKlred thousand bricks every day lijr many 

 days past, and that is a regular day's work, end- 

 ing at 4 o'clock P. M. each day. 



These machines are Alfred Hall's patent. 

 The more they are tried, the more do they in- 

 crease in fiivor among tliose who best understand 

 the business. 



There are two other yards at work by the same 

 owner, in a similar way. The patentee, Mr. Hall, 

 resides at Perth Amboy, New Jersey. — AC YorU 

 Tribune. 



The Aphis, or Pla.vt Locse. A quick, cheap 

 and efficient method of destroying the aphis np,- 

 oii ihe leaves of large trees, is by fiimiiiating with 

 tobacco. Take a dish of coals and throw upon it 

 some tobacco stalks well moistened that thev 

 may not blaze; place it at the windward side of 

 the tree and as near tlie branches as possible, 

 that the insects upon the under side of the leaves 

 may receive Ihe full benefit of the smoke. — In a 

 few miniiies the tree will he cleared of this trou- 

 blesome insect. J. C. II. 



Detroit, July 20, 1847. 

 g 



There is no material change here in the prices 

 current from last nionth. 



Lime .llania. 

 Ill a recent nuuilu'r nl ifie Phnighinaii we 

 made some comments on the .iriji-le ol'a corres- 

 pondent of the M mil- Farmer, v\iiii undertook to 

 state the reason why lime ought to be procured 

 by all liirmers to enrich their laiu(s. 



The Genesee Farmer copies our article and 

 comments upon it iii the liiliowing words: 



" Without endorsing what is said by the writer 

 in the Maine Fanner, we must express our sur- 

 prise that the action of lime is a matter of so 

 much dispute in Ni;w lOngland : and to bear the 

 editor of an agricultural journal (pieslion its value 

 " unless it be to correct the acid occasioned by 

 the prevalence of iron ore in the soil." 



" At the risk of being placed among the " copy- 

 ists" and dealers in "old saws," on the books of 

 the Ploughman, we must call attention to the 

 fact that, no other single element in all cnllivate<l 

 plants, has been so generally, and so successfully 

 used as a fertilizer, both in Europe and in this 

 country, as this same miner.d called lime. As 

 Caleb Cushi.ng would s.ay this is ''a fixed fiict." 

 "It would be no easy task to make a sound 

 healthy bone in any animal, unless tli"re was a 

 little lime in the food on which such animal sub- 

 sisted. And if the soil was quite devoid of this 

 mineral, how could the plants raised upon it, to 

 feed man and his domestic animals, extract lime 

 therefrom ? 



Will the Ploughman assert that all soils con- 

 tain a supply of available lime, fully equal to the 

 ulninst demand of wheat and all other crops ? 

 If so, how does it happen that the limestone; 

 lauds of Western New York have yielded for the 

 last 30 years so fine crops of this bread bearing 

 plant, while all the counties in this state and in 

 New England, where lime exists in its minimum 

 qiianliiy, wheat culture is almost unknown ? 

 Facts like these can hardly be put down by a 

 sneer at "copyists and old saws." It is confess- 

 edly by the use of lime mainly, that hundreds of 

 farmers in Maryland are renovating their worn 

 out fields, and harvesting good crops of wheat 

 and gras.^'. The same is true iii Virginia and 

 portions of Pennsylvania. But it is no less true 

 that limen/ofie will not suffice on the granite soils 

 of New England, nor elsewhere to bring fi)rth 

 abundant crops. No one mineral can perform 

 the office in the vegetable economy, which God 

 has assiiined to the joint agency of some eight or 

 ten earthly siihslani^es. You might as well ex- 

 pect to increase the human race on a remote 

 island of the Pacific, whose every inhabitant is 

 ail old bachelor. No such caustic single bless- 

 edness as lime alone, by neutralizing acid, will 

 impart fertility to the earth. 



" If the Massachusetts fiiriners will mix with 

 their lime all the other ingredients that nature 

 uses ill organizing the crop cultivated, we ven- 

 ture to assert that lime will do its share in giv- 

 ing fecundity to the soil. Don't say that both 

 blades of a pair of shears are worthless, because 

 neither half can cut alone." 



Such are the arguments that are relied on to 

 prove that lime is the most iiiqiortant article 

 which a firmer can procure for his fields! 



It will be seen llial the writer docs not attempt 

 to prove that lime hastens the di'composition of 

 oihur materials (a position which must of the ad- 

 vocates of lime assume) but asserts that "no oth- 

 er element &c. has been so generally and so 

 successfully used as a fertilizer both in this 

 country and in Europe as this same mineral called 

 lime." 



This we utterly deny, and should like to have 

 some evidence of it before the writer proceeds 

 any futher. Can the Genesee Farmer pretend 

 that lime has been more generally applied and 

 witli more success to enrich lands than the ex- 

 crements of homed cattle, horses, shcr|i, and 

 hogs? Can he make us all believe that lime' is 

 more eiirii'hing than the putrid flesh of land ani- 

 mals or fish? Or that it has longer been in use? 

 Oh, no, but ''bones cannot be fiirmed vvijhout 

 lime," therefore the food of animals must contain 

 lime ill order to make bone, and therefore lime 

 must be procured and spread on to lands or the 

 plants oil which animals feed will find no lime, 

 and callle will have no bones! 



Our Genesee friend seems to forget our ad- 

 mission that lime is beneficial on certain soils. 

 We admit its usefulness where iron ore abounds, 

 and has he shown that it is useful any where 

 else ? 



He su|>posestlia', the adding of lime to all .soils 

 has unproved them. He ought lo recollect ihiit 

 111 England many tiirmeis deny that lime has 

 been of the least service when applied to their 

 laiiihs 



But " lime is found in all plants." So is sand, 

 or what is called si7e.r— but it does not exactly 

 follow that sand woiihl always prove a very use- 

 fill adjunct to our New England soils. Lime is 

 Ibiind in all the varieties of soil, and plants have 

 lime in them. What then ? It was found by Dr. 

 Jackson, on analyzing the soils of Maine, that 

 soils containing the greatest ipiantity of limo did 

 not inodiico the largest crops of wheal. 



It is a singular fact, admitted by all the lime ad- 

 vocates, that lime, spread on the snrfai-eof soils 

 that are baseil on rmieslone rock, does more service 

 than o/i soils without such basis. It may be inler- 

 red from this that the more lime there is the bet- 

 ter is the soil. Is this the theory of our friend ? 



We have lauds here that would be improved 

 by spreading 100 casks of sand to an acre. We 

 have peal bogs that are more benefited by one 

 load of common gravel.tlian by 100 loads of lime. 

 Mixtures of dirt'ereiit kinds of soil are generally 

 nsefiil ; and we much incline to think that many 

 who have been so much delighted with the ad- 

 vantages they have derived, from spreading a 

 hundred casks of lime on an acre of their laud, 

 will find that 100 casks of sand, well spread, 

 well mixed, and well tended, with a view to a 

 premium crop, will help thein as much as the 

 100 casks of lime. — Mass. Ploughntan. 



In the course of the last ten years of reading, 

 particularly oii matters appertaining to agricul- 

 ture, we have seen and admired much that has 

 come from the pen of .Mr. Buckminster, of Fra- 

 minghain, in the several papers to which he has 

 contributed : he is strong and sturdy as a tiller of 

 the soil as he is plain often in matter of fact. — 

 Sometimes we find men in the discussion of a 

 popular topic, having much more influence, es- 

 pecially when their side of an argument favors 

 the inclination of jiopular prejudice, by repeated 

 bold assertion, by " denying all things anil insist- 

 ing upon proof," than the most able reasoner 

 who is ready to measure with accuracy and con- 

 sider the weight of his opponent's argument. 



Mr. Buckminster begins (for the title of his 

 article is his own,) with the argumentum acl hom- 

 inem, in which for ten years he has treated the 

 application of lime as a manure with the appel- 

 lation of "Lime Mania" as though this was one 

 of the humbugs of the day which have resulted 

 in teaching the people a lesson at au expense al- 

 together out of proportion to its value. If our 

 recollection docs not fiiil lis, Mr. Buckminster 

 commenced his hostility to lime not simply by 

 the doctrine that it was altogether useless as a 

 manure, but that it was actually deleterious. For 

 a man of his strong (uejiidices he now conies 

 down a great way when he ad nits that in some 

 soils lime may be useful as some other ingredi- 

 ents wliich in common parlance are considered 

 of little or no value, especially when their pro- 

 portion is greater than other materials necessary 

 to make a fruitful soil. There is a good deal of 

 fox — the old fox, too — in throwing sand into the 

 face of this argument on lime. It is practically 

 niund, that the land where sand is most preva- 

 lent is soonest divested of its strength ; hence 

 practical farinprs, who regard only appearances 

 as the indications of soil, dread a redundancy of 

 sand. The mass of mankind do not at once ap- 

 preciate the fact that a greater quaiilily of what 

 is taken to be the most worthless ingredient of 

 of the soil is always present in the most produc- 

 tive soil, Water is so |ilenly iii all our country 

 as to bear no high price except in time of 

 drought, and a siipiirabundaiice of water is often 

 inconvenient and even destructive ; sand is felt 

 as the ^neater curse to a dry soil in the abseiico 



