366 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



are of great use in this respect — and it is well that 

 every child should have something to call its own, — 

 something which is partially, at least, dependent on 

 its care. 



Cutting up Corn. — It saves some heavy lifting in 

 binding corn, as described by "A. S. B.;" to tie the 

 corn rvitJwut taking vp, — a little care by the cutter 

 will leave the stalks sufficiently even. I am versus 

 topping in any case. 



The Farmer for 18.58 — Will be worthy of " new 

 type and better paper," if of anything like the value 

 of the present volume. That it will be better, we do 

 not doubt in the least, and every present reader 

 should subscribe and ask his neighbor to do likewise. 

 He will benefit himself by increasing the editor's 

 power to make the paper better, as well as by help- 

 ing the cause of rural improvement. 



Mind your Business. — A truly suggestive Essay, 

 this of friend Sanfield's. The farmer has business 

 enough to occupy his hands, hi? head, and his heart 

 — business for all his strength and skill — all his 

 knowledge and intellect — ail his moral powers and 

 afl'ections. Let him attend to it. 



Improve your Fowls — Good advice, surely, but 

 too many farmers need to improve materially in their 

 estimate of the needs of poultry, or the best fowls 

 would fail under their system of management. Hens 

 should be cared for at all seasons of the year — should 

 have proper food and shelter — and they will then 

 prove profitable. We mean to try the Black Span- 

 ish for eggs, with the Dorkings for raising chickens. 



Grapes AND their Culture. — I have tried several 

 times, with but little success, to raise grape vines 

 from cuttings. This year I layered a vine, and have 

 five or six good plants. One old vine bore several 

 bushels, but they ripened later than usual, and some 

 were frosted. These were not lost, however, as they 

 were picked immediately, and thawed in cold water, 

 and came out fresh, and uninjured, at least, for pre- 

 serving. B. 



Niagara Co., JY. Y. 



NOTES FOR THE MONTH.-BY S. W. 



The Genesee Farmer and its Editor. — When, in 

 1850, I read in the Genesee Farmer a very interest- 

 ing, unique rural article, over the signature of Joseph 

 Harris, I then set him down as an old, thorough- 

 bred farmer, au fait of the chemistry, as well as of 

 the practical and mechanical routine, of his high 

 calling. What was my surprise, then, when, two or 

 three years afterwards, I saw him for the first time, 

 not an old, but a young man — an English farmer's 

 son, not only to the manor born among his father's 

 bovines of Herd Book pedigree, but with a voca- 

 tion and love for his inherited calling rarely to be 

 found even in a farmer's son. His t^ree years' study 

 and daily practice on the Rothamsted Experimental 

 Farm, under the instructions of the indefatigable 

 Lawes and the erudite Gilbert, had filled his mind 

 with a love of truth as it is in nature, counting as 

 nothing all theories that would not stand the test of 

 experiment. Here, also, he acquired those habits of 

 discrimination, and that logical acumen, which he now 

 so often displays in his sometimes rather unsparing 

 criticisms on the agricultural theories of others. He 

 has ever been a watchful sentinel of farmers' inter- 

 ests—so unremitting in exposing the cheat in special 

 manures, that he once dofied his pen and donned the 



the garb of an Irish laborer, to obtain admittance as 

 a workman into a New Jersey superphosphate and 

 guano laboratory, in order that he might discover the 

 occult frauds, and refute the similated afiidavits by 

 which his own arguments were attempted to be de- 

 feated, and the farmers stultified. This incident alone 

 shows the indomitable character of the man, in his 

 loyalty to the farmer's cause. But aside from his 

 own editorial matter — which is admitted, even by 

 his competing brethren of the craft, as standiag at 

 the head of our agricultural literature — the late ex- 

 tra contributions to the Farmer of Prize Essays by 

 his practical farmer readers, ma)e and female, ars of 

 great interest to every individual who lives by dairy 

 or tillage. Hence, no matter how many other good 

 agricultural papers the farmer takes — and they are 

 all good — he should by no means neglect to join a 

 club and pay the paltry sum of thirty-seven and & 

 half cents for the Genesee Farmer. 



Mr. Harris also publishes a Rural Annual, at 

 twenty-five cents. No farmer and gardener should 

 be without this well and late-posted and improved 

 repertorial manual. 



Turnips among Corn — Prairie Grass, &c. — C. 

 Brackett, of Fulton Co., Ind., is right when he 

 sows turnip seed after the last working among corn — 

 not to get edible turnips, but only that the plants 

 may cover the ground when the corn is removed. 

 Their tops then organize the ammonia of the atmos- 

 phere, and are afterwards to be eat down by sheep, 

 whose excrements fertilize the soil. In reply to his 

 querj-, I must say that all prairie grass which ever 

 came under my notice was coarse. All the varieties 

 of Agrostis and Poas are much coarser than the 

 grasses of the same family in this region, to say 

 nothing of the great variety of wild flowering shrubs, 

 which, when in bloom, appear in the distance to over- 

 shadow all that is green and edible. 



The Advantages of a Grass Country proper. — I 

 asked a farmer neighbor, the other day, how a man 

 of his experience came to make his first farm loca- 

 tion (after leaving his fair island home) in the snowy 

 regions of Madison county, where corn rarely ripened, 

 and wheat was not. He replied that the town of 

 Otselic was the most profitable dairying and stock- 

 growing town in the State of New York. The five 

 years he lived there he never saw pastures suffer 

 from drouth, while here, with the single exception of 

 the past summer, he never witnessed one summer 

 without a trying drouth, which, although it ripened 

 the corn, was always death on pastures, and oftea 

 materially shortened the hay and oat crops. Again, 

 he said they not only had double the crop of oata 

 and grass there, but, when warmly stabled in winter, 

 it took no more hay to winter cattle there than here. 

 True, snow comes in November, and hes until near 

 May; but it keeps the pastures warm, and they have 

 grass there as early as here, and more of it — as oar 

 pastures are too often fed close, when theirs are pro- 

 tected from such bootless economy by the early and 

 late snow. 



Sorghum does not Ripen its Seed here. — I hacJ 

 two rows of thickly-planted Sorghum, which grew 

 larger and taller than any I saw on exhibition at 

 either our County or State Fair; but, although frost 

 kept off till the iOth of October— a month after the 

 seed and leaves came to a stand — the seed failed to 

 represent those planted, both in color and farina. 

 I There can be no doubt that, with a powerful 



