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NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



The following conversation at the Farmers' Club, 

 cut from the Rural New-Yorker, brings some intel- 

 ligence of the news : 



Dr. Underbill. — I omitted speaking of another 

 greac source of phosphate of lime, and that is one 

 which some few farmers have hit upon. I mean 

 that part of the farm which lies six inches deeper 

 under the farm. There, since the deluge, lies un- 

 disturbed the fertilizer usually hard. Roots of the 

 grains and annuals cannot penetrate it. There it 

 is and has been accumulating for thousands of 

 years, insoluble, except when roots apply them- 

 selves to it. Not one farmer in ten ever plows 

 deeper than five inches. The roots cannot get at 

 the mine below — it is too hard. He cannot afford 

 to buy guano or bone ; but he can afford a sub- 

 soil plow. Let him go down fifteen inches into his 

 good farm below, and he may have a new farm good 

 for fifteen years to come. 



I never thought until, this year, that my loose 

 sandy, gravelly land wanted sub-soiling. It is so 

 very loose that one almost wades in it. But nev 

 ertheless, this year I have sub-soiled 12 to 14 

 inches deep, and my com on that tillage has given 

 me a double crop. I found the bottom of my very 

 loose top soil had packed ; the annual plants could 

 not put their roots through it. My double crop 

 has succeeded in spite of a pretty severe drought. 

 I have for many years always plowed to the depth 

 of from eight to ten inches, but this year I have 

 resorted to the farm which lies under mine success- 

 fully. 



Dr. Church. — Is it necessary to sub-soil every 

 year? 



Dr. Underhill. — I think not; but I mean to 

 sub-soil every acre I cultivate at all. It operates, 

 also, as a drainer. It also receives the fertilizer 

 from the atmosphere. The first store of manure is 

 our earth ; the second is our atmosphere. That 

 from the latter enters the earth by means of dew 

 and rains — by dew even in times of drought — when 

 a deep-tilled soil can take it up, while a shallow- 

 one cannot. Up to this day the shallow work pre- 

 vails. Nineteen out of twenty farms are so abused. 

 A farmer who can neither buy books nor attend 

 Farmers' Clubs, can nevertheless plow deep. — 

 Let him try it, and if he fails, let him come to this 

 Club and tell us so ! 



and it can only find access into plants in a fluid 

 state, combined with oxygen. From this view of 

 the matter, the reader will understand why we re- 

 commend long manure for hoed autumnal ripen- 

 ing crops, and that why we insist that one half of 

 the value of cattle dung is lost by suffering it to 

 be reduced to the condition of short muck before 

 it is buried in the soil. All vegetable matters con- 

 tain more or less carbon ; and carbouic acid gas is 

 invariably produced in the fermenting and putre- 

 fying processes. — Genesee Farmer. 



WASTE OF MANURE. 



Little or no pains is taken usually to save the 

 liquid manure of animals; no earth or saw dust is 

 placed in or beneath the stable to absorb it, and the 

 barn-yard is often so situated that all the liquids 

 that would collect in it, run off into the road, or are 

 conducted to the adjoining field, where they are so 

 little spread about, as to injure the crop by pro- 

 ducing an immoderate luxuriance. Liquid ma- 

 nure is exceedingly valuable, and the yards and 

 stables of the farmer should be so constructed, 

 that it may all be saved. There should be no out- 

 let to the barn-yard, where the fluids collected in 

 it can run off". They should either be taken in and 

 applied directly to the land, oi poured upon the 

 compost heaps in and around the barn-yard. The 

 turf about his fences and stone walls or the mud 

 and muck from his swamps, should be collected in 

 heaps or spread around his yards in order to ab- 

 sorb the fertilizing liquids collected there. 



LONG MANURE. 

 Vegetable and animal matters, when brought in- 

 to a state of fermentation by the agency of air, 

 heat, and moisture, immediately give off carbonic 

 acid gas, which, if confined beneath the surface of 

 the soil, will become mixed with the moisture 

 there, and be taken up by the roots of plants. 

 And what is carbonic acid gas? It is composed of 

 two parts of oxygen, a constituent of atmospheric 

 air, and one part of carbon, the principal constitu- 

 ent of plants, rendered volatile by the heat of fer- 

 mentation. It is the digested food of plants; it 

 becomes incorporated with water in the soil, is 

 taken up by the spongioles or roots of plants ; 

 transmitted through the sap vessels to the leaves, 

 is there decomposed by the sun's rays; the oxy- 

 gen passes into the atmosphere; the carbon pass- 

 es down through another set of vessels, and being 

 gradually disengaged from the water which con- 

 veys it, by evaporation, it becomes a solid substance 

 of the plant. Carbon constitutes principally the 

 structure of the stems, branches, and roots of plants, 



INTERESTING EXPERIMENT. 



If the following, from the London Times, be 

 true, our geological correctors of Moses' cosmo- 

 gony will have need to correct some of their dates, 

 to say the least : — 



Professor Gorini, who is professor of natural 

 history at the University of Lodi, made recently, 

 before a circle of private friends, a remarkable ex- 

 periment illustrative of his theory as to the forma- 

 tion of mountains. He melts some substances, 

 known only to himself, in a vessel, and allows the 

 liquid to cool. At first it presents an even surface ; 

 but a portion continues to ooze up from beneath, 

 and gradually elevations are formed, until at length 

 ranges and chains of hills are formed, exactly cor- 

 responding in shape with those which are found on 

 the earth. Even to the stratification the resem- 

 blance is complete, and M. Gorini can produce on 

 a small scale the phenomena of volcanoes and 

 earthquakes. He contends, therefore, that the in- 

 equalities on the face of the globe are the result of 

 certain materials, first reduced by the application 

 of heat to a liquid state, and then allowed gradual- 

 ly to consolidate. 



An Expensive Female. — An economist the 

 other day observed a lady who carried one day's 

 labor of two thousand men upon her shoulders, 

 and that of as many more hanging from her ears. 

 There was not a limb in her body which did not 

 call for the hard work of an entire day of one 

 hundred men or women ; and if it were usual to 

 adorn the person with gold, like a Chinese pagoda, 

 instead of silks and furs and textures of lace and 

 wool, what was expended on her dress would have 

 plated her all over with the precious metal. 



