SPIRIT OF THE MONTHLIES. 359 



I give my fowls meat : this is indispensable, if ihcy are not allowed 

 to go at large. If corn is fed out, it should be soaked, and fifteen 

 bushels is a fair yearly allowance for twelve hens and a rooster. But 

 they should always have food by them, and after they have become 

 habituated to find enough at all times in the trough, they take but 

 a few kernels at a time, except just before retiring to roost, when 

 they will take nearly a spoonful into their crops ; but if they are 

 scantily or irregularly fed, they will greedily snatch up a whole 

 crop full at a time, and stop laying, and not unfequenlly engender 

 some latal disease. 



[From the same] 



PREPARATION OF SEED. 



Mr. Editor — I do not know any subject in the whole range of 

 agricultural pursuits, upon which labor can be so profitably be- 

 stowed as in the preparation of seed. It is lamentable to obsei-ve 

 the immense loss which is continually sustained in consequence of 

 indifference and carelessness on this point ; and it is really to be 

 feared that every species of grain will continue to degenerate in 

 quality and diminish in quantity, unless the farmer is awakened to 

 a proper sense of the importance which he should attach to this part 

 of his business. It has been the observation of almost every man, 

 that those products of the farm which are less valuable, and which, 

 therefore, the farmer is more indifferent about, are annually growing 

 worse in quality. Oats are lighter in the grain and upon the ground 

 than they were formerly ; and rye is becoming so exceedingly bad in 

 quality, and so uncertain a crop, as to be scarcely worth committing 

 to the ground. Farmers are heard constantly to express their wonder 

 why the product of the rye crop is not as it was formerly, and that 

 they can not raise as much oats to the acre as they used to do ; but 

 they will cease to wonder, if they will but reflect how exceedingly 

 indifferent they have been with regard to the quality of the seed 

 which they have used. The importance and value of the wheat and 

 corn crops, have sometimes induced them to make an exertion to 

 procure belter seed than their own ; but who ever takes the trouble 

 to go beyond his own granaries, to seek for seed rye or oats ? Or 

 who ever takes more pains in its preparation, than to measure it 

 into his bags from the pile, as it comes from the barn floor ? To this 

 alone is attributable the fact that these crops make but a scanty 

 return for the labour bestowed upon them. I do not urge the recol- 

 lection of these things for the sake of these crops, for I do not deem 

 them essential to the farming interest, beyond the small amount of 

 them which the farmer may be supposed to require for his own 

 immediate consumption ; but the same reasons and principles pre- 

 cisely are applicable to wheat and corn, to which we attach so much 

 importance. If, in the preparation of seed wheat, we take the grain 



