340 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



have never yet given the suhject a thought. We 

 hope the general committee will find their most 

 sanguine hopes realized. 



BOOKS. 



The Farmer's Cvclopedia of Modern Agricul- 

 ture, is a beautifully printed volume of nearly 500 

 pages, and issued by Saxton, N. Y., the Agricul- 

 tural publisher. Like all his publications, it 

 comes into the world in a neat and attractive form, 

 and is" illustrated with a great many engravings of 

 animals, farm implements, poultry and insects. 



This work is prepared by the Rev. John L. 

 Blake, a scholar, a close observer and student of 

 nature, and a gentleman whose tastes and sympa- 

 thies have had such a leaning to rural affairs as to 

 lead him to devote a goodly portion of his life to 

 the wants and interests of the farmer. The book 

 cannot fail to have a widely-extended circulation 

 and become eminently useful. 



The following brief extracts from the preface 

 foreshadow the author's design, in part, in pre- 

 paring the work : 



"It is the design of the author, in all his labors 

 for rural localities, to improve the mind as well as 

 the soil. Indeed, such labors for the former will 

 ultimately prove of more benefit than those having 

 exclusive reference to the latter. If the one is du- 

 ly promoted, the other will follow in its wake. 

 Wheuever a rural population becomes imbued with 

 a well-cultivated literary taste and a love of sci- 

 ence, there need be no apprehension that agricul- 

 ture will be neglected, or that it will fail to be du- 

 ly appreciated. Rarely will the soil receive a de- 

 fective culture, except from the ignorant and the 

 illiterate. 



"It has sometimes been thought by farmers that 

 a book, having particular reference to their voca- 

 tion,^ necessarily filled with oxides and silicates. 

 or with sulphates and phosphates ; that the men- 

 tal food of the scientific agriculturist is a compound 

 of caustics and volatilized poisons ; and that his 

 very breath and clothes are so impregnated with 

 carbonates and alkalies, that they cannot approach 

 him without a kind of suffocation. Misapprehen- 

 sions of this sort must be removed. Prejudices of 

 this nature must be overcome. If not, the treas- 

 ures of chemical knowledge will do little in reno- 

 vating the soil. On the contrary, sterility will in- 

 crease, till the wand of desolation passes over the 

 broad earth. We labor to overcome these obsta- 

 cles — to progress in rural economy." 



MAINE] BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Among the acts passed by the late Legislature 

 of Maine, was one establishing a Board of Agricul- 

 ture. The act provides that each of the incorpor- 

 ated agricultural societies in the State shall, at 

 their meeting in the fall, choose a member of the 

 Board of Agriculture. The duty of the Board is 

 to discuss such subjects as pertain to the agricul- 

 tural interests of the State ; to devise and recom- 

 mend, from time to time, to the several agricul- 

 tural societies, and to the people, facts, improve- 



ments, discoveries and views in regard to the con- 

 dition and future prosperity of agriculture in the 

 State ; and to annually make to the Legislature, 

 through the joint standing legislative committee 

 on agriculture, a report which shall be published 

 by the Legislature as a public document for dis- 

 tribution among the people. The Secretary of the 

 Board is to receive one hundred dollars annual sal- 

 ary, and the members are to be paid not exceed- 

 ing two dollars per day for their services. The 

 Board will hold its annual meetings at Augusta, 

 on the third Wednesday of January. 



FLAX AND FLAX-COTTON. 



Gov. Farwell, of Wisconsin, has written a lucid 

 and forcible letter to the State Agricultural Socie- 

 ty, urging the propriety of a far more extensive 

 cultivation of Flax in that State. Wheat has 

 proved a very uncertain crop there, and some other 

 staple must be extensively substituted. Gov. Far- 

 well shows clearly that the climate and soil of 

 Wisconsin are admirably adapted to the growth of 

 flax ; that $25 per acre would not be a large av- 

 erage yield, while $40 per acre may be obtained ; 

 and that the importation and sale of 10,000 bush- 

 els of seed at a cost of $15,000 would secure a crop 

 worth at least $250,000 for the present year, and 

 not less than $5,000,000 next year. 



Mr. John Galbraith, who has grown flax in 

 Waukesha County in each of the four last years, 

 has had three good crops and one middling one. 

 [During these four years, we believe there have 

 been two or three signal failures of the wheat 

 crop.] An efficient Breaking Machine is now in 

 operation at Beloit, wdiere flax straw is regularly 

 purchased by the ton, rotted, dressed, and sent 

 eastward to market. And if the Governor's recom- 

 mendation is seconded, there will soon be similar 

 establishments in nearly every county, with oil- 

 mills, where seed may likewise be sold for cash. 



The flax culture in this country will lie consider- 

 ably extended this season. Hon. Henry L. Ells- 

 worth, formerly U. S. Commissioner of Patents, 

 will sow 500 acres this season. As seed will 

 doubtless be dear for a year or so, it is computed 

 that $30 per acre may be obtained from good land 

 well cultivated in the Eastern States. The labor 

 is hardly equal to that required to secure an aver- 

 age yield of Indian corn. Twenty bushels of seed 

 have often been grown on an acre, and this alone 

 will probably be worth $25 ; while the straw will 

 range from $5 to $10 per ton, as it shall be furth- 

 er from or nearer to breaking machinery. Twenty 

 bushels of seed and two tons of straw are consid- 

 ered a fair yield per acre in England. 



Four companies are now engaged in the manu- 

 facture of linen thread in this country — at Cohoes, 

 N. Y. ; Willimantic, Conn.; at Clinton, Mass.; 

 and at Andover, Mass. The Cohoes thread was 

 never excelled in Great Britain nor anywhere else. 

 (There are probably others, but these we know.) 

 And a company has just been formed to manufac- 

 ture linen fabrics at Fall River, Mass., with a cap- 

 ital of $500,000. There ought to be thirty such 

 companies organized and operating forthwith, and 

 if the Tariff of 1842 were still in force, there would 

 be. 



In England, the business goes on prosperously. 



