194 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 4. 



rishes from the want of food, and perhaps also 

 from a rupture of its vessels. 



All wheat, shallow-sowed, must have its reser- 

 voirs of food but slightly covered with soil, and of 

 course they are fully exposed. When wheat is 

 sown early at any depth, a second, and sometimes 

 a third system of roots is formed within an inch 

 of the surface. In these, many stems originate, 

 each of which has its receptacle of nourishment 

 at its base, and it is quite certain that in most in- 

 stances, the food, which was contained in the seed 

 and the adjoining knot is entirely exhausted by 

 the supplies of nourishment it affords the upper 

 portions of the plant. The life of early sowed 

 wheat must then, like that which is shallow sowed, 

 depend upon the preservation of the reservoirs of 

 saccharine matter which arc placed at or near the 

 surface of the ground, and of course exposed to 

 the unfavorable action of variable weather during 

 winter. 



Wheat which is late sowed, generates no se- 

 cond blade or new system of roots, and of course, 

 the nourishment for spring's use is retained in the 

 receptacle which adjoins the seed. If then we 

 sow sufficiently late in autumn, and place the seed 

 deep in the soil, we shall provide every security 

 against the hazards of bad weather, which the na- 

 ture of the case admits of. 



In the ordinary course of husbandry, some of 

 the wheat is necessarily deposited at considerable 

 depth in the soil, and when this takes place suffi- 

 ciently late in the season, the receptacle of food 

 will be protected by its covering of earth, and a 

 partial crop will often be realized, although there 

 may be, when the spring opens, no signs of life on 

 the surface of the field. In such cases as the de- 

 struction of the blade, which issues from the seed- 

 roots in autumn can be of little importance, one 

 would suppose that the surviving plants will grow 

 the more vigorously, from their being less in num- 

 ber, and by tillering produce many stems with 

 large well filled ears; such, however is not the 

 fact; usually the stems are single and the heads 

 are not large. To account lor this, it must be 

 recollected, that after the ground has thawed in 

 the spring, the earth settles and often becomes 

 so extremely hard that doubtless many plants 

 die, in their struggle to overcome the opposing 

 resistance, and the surprise is, that any one 

 should possess vigor enough to protrude even 

 a single stem through the hard earth that co- 

 vers it. 



From this view of the subject, the practice may 

 be recommended, of effectually harrowing the field 

 in the spring after the ground has settled, in order 

 to supply the plant with fresh air, and give a free 

 passage to its upward growth. After the harrow 

 has been used, the roller ought to be employed to 

 reset such roots as have been displaced and dimin- 

 ish the evaporation of moisture. 



In England, a wheat plant has been taken up, 

 separated into eighteen parts and replanted, and 

 by successive divisions and replantations, a crop of 

 three and one-third pecks of wheat was obtained 

 in less than eighteen months from the time the 

 seed was sown. If the roots of wheat can be so 

 minutely divided and successfully replanted, there 

 is little danger that the freest use of the harrow 

 can be injurious, provided the roller be also used. 

 The fact appears to be, that nothing is necessary 

 to thevernal growth of the plant, but the pre- 



servation of the apparatus which contains the 

 saccharine matter, which is its proper vernal 

 food; so that if the roots and top be cut off, and 

 the bulb be planted in a genial soil, the plant will 

 grow. 



Notwithstanding the arguments which have 

 been urged in favor of sowing wheat late, it must 

 be conceded that when early sown and our fields 

 are cultivated in the usual manner, it produces the 

 largest crop, if it survive the cold season. Whether 

 such improvements may not be made as to combine 

 the benefits of a sure and large crop, is a question 

 still open to investigation; the probability is, that 

 both advantages may be secured, by a more correct 

 knowledge of the proper time to sow, and of the 

 best methods of culture. 



In the first volume of the transactions of the so- 

 ciety for the promotion of agriculture, arts and 

 manufactures, instituted in the state of New 

 York, it is stated that in Huntington, Suffolk coun- 

 ty, fifty-two bushels of wheat had been raised by 

 manure on an acre of land, and Mr. Downs is 

 said to have raised, on a poor, gravelly, dry soil, 

 by the use of fish as a manure, at the rate of 128 

 bushels of rye per acre. In this case, the rye 

 would doubtless have lodged and been of little val- 

 ue, were it not that it was twice eaten off by his 

 neighbors' sheep which broke into the lot; once 

 when the rye was 9 inches high, and again when 

 it was about 6 inches high. 



The production of so large a crop of wheat and 

 of rye must have proceeded from causes which 

 are steady and uniform in their operations, and if 

 all the circumstances Which had occurred to pro- 

 duce them had been distinguished and noted down, 

 similar crops might have been again raised. Some 

 things which occurred during the cultivation of 

 this rye crop may be ascribed to accident or chance, 

 so far as Mr. Down's sagacity was concerned, 

 but the causes which proximately occasioned the 

 crop, did not work by accident or by chance, but 

 agreeably to the laws or rules from which they 

 neverdeviate. This uniformity of operation lays 

 the foundation for making future discoveries, and 

 brings within the grasp of our faculties the know- 

 ledge of increasing our crops by methods the least 

 laborious and expensive. 



The period may arrive when the farmer shall 

 pursue his methods of culture with an anticipation 

 of the consequences which will result, analagoua 

 to that of the mechanician in the construction of 

 a machine, and when, by direct means, he shall 

 produce greater crops than ever were obtained by 

 mere empirical trials. 



Time was when the greatest philosophers taught 

 the doctrine, that all things pertaining to the sur- 

 face of the earth were too irregular and too much 

 under the government of chance, to admit of sci- 

 entific inquiry; this error has, within the two last 

 centuries, been dispelled. But a similar error, in 

 regard to rural affairs, is embraced by almost all 

 our practical farmers, and the task of correcting 

 and exposing it is devolved, it would seem, upon 

 the unaided efforts of a few individuals. Here 

 then is the difficulty. 



From the Rochester (N. V.) Daily Democrat. 

 UNPARALLELED SPEED UPON THE CANAL. 



On Saturda3 T , some forty or fifty of our citizens 

 took a ride upon one of the new line packet boats, 



