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On Straw Cutting, and Mangel TVurtzeU 



Read February 1817. 



Philadelphia, 2d Mo. {Feb.) 3d, 1817. 



Respected Friend, 



Thy address under date of the 23d ultimo was re- 

 ceived the 24th, and should have been acknowledged ere 

 this, had it not been for the press of various engagements, 

 which have occasioned the delay until this time. The 

 information was correct, relative to my having one of 

 Hotchkiss's straw and hay cutters (being one of the least 

 of the two sizes exhibited for sale) and when I first got 

 it, I felt much pleased; being impressed with the idea, 

 that it possessed considerable advantages over our old 

 fashioned kind, in which the knife is moved with the 

 hand, both with respect to the rapidity of cutting, as well 

 as to the regularity in the length of the chaff. But I 

 have since found, on testing the two kinds, that Hotch- 

 kiss's, in point of expedition in chaffing, is inferior, but 

 in point of regularity in cutting, superior. The infor- 

 mation requested on the subjects of my success in rais- 

 ing the Mangel Wurtzel, or Scarcity Root, and which is 

 also sometimes termed the Beet root, as also the advan- 

 tages I have derived from feeding with cut hay and straw, 

 in preference to feeding those articles entire ; so far as 

 my small degree of experience extends, in relation to those 

 subjects, I will communicate with pleasure. 



My attention to feeding my horses (four in number) 

 with cut hay, by measure, commenced in the fall of last 



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