THE GENESEE FARMER. 



279 



in Bowino: barley, wrA no ben<?fit that I could dis- 

 cover. But drilling possesses one advanta<i-e, and 

 that not a small one, the seed is all covered with uni- 

 formity and all grows, whereas in sowing broadcast 

 it does not, especially in dry weather. 



C. C. Wilson. 

 JVewfuTie, JViagara Co., JV. Y. 



BAKEWELL'S ANECDOTE, 

 ALIAS GOOD FARMING IN A NUT-SHELL. 



A LATE number of the M<trk Lane Express eon- 

 tains an old anecdote of the late Mr. Bakev:ei,l, 

 the justly celebrated founder of Om modern Leices- 

 ter sheep. We have given the anecdote before, but 

 it will bear repetition, for the attempt to farm too 

 much land is one of the crying evils of American 

 ^riculture. 



" A farmer of the old school and golden times, who 

 owned and occupied 1,000 acres of clay land, but poor 

 in point of monej', had three daughters looking their 

 father very hard in th« face for money. He went to 

 Mr. Bakevtell to know what to do for them. Mr. 

 Bakewell told him to keep his money and give each 

 daughter some land, and make it known that he would 

 do so, and he would very soon lessen his family at 

 home. He then made it known that he would give 

 his eldest daughter 250 acres of land. I need net add 

 tiiat the lady had forthwith plenty of beaus to choose 

 out of; the father's house was haunted with young 

 men, and she soon got married, and the father gave 

 ber the portion that he promised, but no money; and 

 he found by a little more speed and belter manage- 

 ment the produce of his farm increased. Three years 

 after he made it known that he would give his second 

 daughter 250 acres of land, which drew shoals of beaus, 

 and she soon got married, and the father gave her her 

 portion. He then set to work, and began to grub up 

 his furze and fern, and plowed up some of his poor 

 furze land — nay, and whei'e the furze covered in some 

 closes nearly half the land. And after giving half of 

 his land away to two of his daughters, he found the 

 produce of his farm increased ; because his newly bro- 

 ken up land brought him excessive crops. At the 

 same time, he farmed the whole of his land better, 

 for he employed four times the labor upon it; had no, 

 more dead fallows the third ytar ; instead of which he 

 gi"ew two green crops in one year, and ate them on the 

 land. A garden, Mr. Bakewell told him, never re- 

 quired a dead fallow. He no more folded from a poor 

 grass close to better the condition of a poor plowed 

 one. But the great advantage was, that he had got 

 the same money to manage 500 aci'es that he had at 

 first to manage 1,000 acres. Three years after the 

 second marriage, he made it kn-own that he would give 

 bis third and last daughter 250 acres of land. She 

 had a beau stood in readiness, and three or four more 

 within call, and she was married in a week. She thought 

 it never too soon to do well, and the father portioned 

 her off with land. He then began to a^k himself a 

 few questions, how he was to make as much of 250 

 acres as he had done of 1,000 acres. He found neces- 

 sity was the mother of invention. He then paid off 

 his bailiff, who weighed twenty stone; he found that 

 he had been helping the men to manage the master, 

 instead of helping the master to manage the men. He 

 then rose with the lark in the long days, and went to 

 bed with the lamb. He got much more work done 

 for his money; for, instead of saying to his men, 'Go 

 and do it,' he said, ' Come, my boys, let us go and do 

 it.' He foimd a great difference between 'come' and 

 ' go.' He made his servants, laborers, and horses move < 



faster — he broke' them from their snail's pace; h« 



found the eye of the master <piickened the pace of the 

 servant. He grubbed up every piece of furze on th« 

 farm, and converted a great deal of corn into nieat. 

 He preserved the black water, the essence of the ma- 

 nure, and conveyed it upon the land. He cut down 

 all his high hedges, straightened hi.s zigzag fences, cut 

 his serpentine water-courses straight, and gained much 

 land by so doing; made dams and sluices, and irri- 

 gated all the land he could. Some of his hedges and 

 borders were covered with bushes from ten to fourteen 

 yards in width, and some of his closes w6l j no wider 

 than streets; and there he grubbed up the hedges and 

 borders, and thiow several little clones into one. He 

 found that, instead of growing white-thorn hedges and 

 haws, to ftcd foreign migratory birds in winter, Le 

 ought to grow food for man. ' I sold him long-horned 

 bulls, and let him rams,' said Mr. Bakewell, ' and 

 told him the value of labor, and what ought to be pep- 

 formed by a certain number of men, worked oxen, or 

 horses, within a given time. I taught him to sew leas, 

 and plow deeper and better, and tlmt there were limits 

 and measures to all things; but, above all, the hus- 

 bandman ought to be stronger than the farm. I 

 taught him how to make hot land colder, and cold 

 land hotter; light land stiff, and stiff land lighter. I 

 advised him to breed no inferior sheep, cattle or horses, 

 but the best of each kind, as the best consumed n» 

 more food than the worst. Size has nothing to do with 

 profit It is not what an animal makes, so much as 

 what it costs making.' " 



HOW IT MAY BE EASIER FOR A MACHINE T« 

 WOKK THAN TO DO NOTHING. 



It has been slightly puzzling to some to understand 

 the results shown by the dynamometer in respect to 

 the draft of several mowing machines, principally 

 those of cam construction. In these, the draft of 

 some is proved to be as great when the machine is 

 drawn over the bare ground, as it is when cutting 

 a swath of grass, if not absolutely greater ! But the 

 explanation of the paradox is by no means so d){5- 

 cult after all. The bar to which the knives are at- 

 tached is driven at a speed that gives it a great mo- 

 mentum, which must be overcome as each vibratioa 

 is changed from right to lelt and from left to right 

 The power required to effect this rapid jerk must be 

 sufficient first to bring the knives to a high speed, and 

 then to a full stop, before commencing an equally 

 rapid motion in an opposite direction — in other words 

 by the frequent change in the direction of this mo- 

 tion, the momentum which usually aids the working 

 of a machine here becomes a double obstacle; no 

 sooner is a high point reached, than it must all be 

 overcome, and a new one created. Now if the force 

 requisite for cutting grass is just enough to overcome 

 the momentum of the knives, when the vibratioa 

 changes from one way to the other, no further expen- 

 diture of power is requisite to stop them — and the 

 draft of the machine is neither more nor less thaa 

 when no grass was cut If, on the other hand, the 

 ease with which the cutting is performed is such that 

 the operation does not deprive the knives of all their 

 momentum, a portion of it only will be overcome, 

 and the horses will then have actually less labor to 

 be cutting than not ! — Country Gentleman. 



The great objection to thin seeding of wheat, \a 

 that the plants tiller and do not ripen so early. In 

 districts affected by the wheat midge, therefore, sow 

 plenty of seed 



