The Durhams are generally admitted to be the best breed for rapid feeding and early 

 maturity, being perfect at three years old. Their milking qualities are said to be good ; 

 but good fat-makers and milkers seldom go together. They require good, rich pasture, 

 and proper attention in winter. If these are given, the breed can not be beaten for beef- 

 making. A cross between a Short-Horn bull and a Native cow, gives a valuable breed 

 for dairy purposes. Some, however, prefer a cross with the Devon. The Devon, too, 

 is undoubtedly. the best bull to use when working cattle are desired. It is likewise said 

 that the Devons stand the winter better than the Durhams., But we must not draw 

 comparisons, else we shall pull an old honse on our heads. 



THE ELEMENTS OF FERTILITY WORSE THAN WASTED. 



The advantage, if not the necessity, of supplying ammonia or substances rich in nitro- 

 gen as manure to our wheat crop, is now universally admitted ; and we will once 

 again call attention to the great loss which the country sustains in the waste of 

 ammoniacal manures in cities and villages, where they so often generate cholera 

 and other pestilential diseases. All medical experience gees to prove that those 

 organized substances, whether vegetable or animal, that most abound in nitrogen, 

 evolve gases of the most malignant character, when they rot. No other culti- 

 vated vegetable, stored up in cities, has generated in its unexpected decay, so much 

 pestilence as cabbage ; and no other has so much nitrogen in its composition, nor so 

 much sulphur and phosphorus. The gaseous compounds of these elementary bodies 

 are now carrying death into thousands of families ; but the careful study of these 

 elements of pestilence and of human food, who Avill encourage ? The good people of 

 Rochester are now afflicted with "cholera, and many have left the city in consequence, 

 when they should have remained and helped to remove the cause of the malady. We 

 have visited the premises where it has been most fatal, (in one block sixteen have died, 

 as we are informed,) and the sources of the malaria are as plain as filthy, wet cellars, 

 and abominable yards, sewers, and privies, can make them. The worst of plagues have 

 been called into existence on board of ships ; and pray, what but decaying vegetable 

 and animal matter do ships ever contain to excite malignant fevers ? The yellow fever, 

 so fatal in southern cities, and the certain death to whites that spend a single night on 

 some rice plantations, alike confirm the great truth of the organic origin of all pestilen- 

 tial diseases. If all the manure now wasted, and worse than wasted, in American and 

 English cities, were properly deodorized, and applied to the land that needs it, how 

 much sickness and suflfering would be prevented ! How many acres would produce 

 three times more, for the benefit of all classes, than they now do ! 



To grow wheat and other crops on poor soils without manure, implies a prodigious 

 waste of labor, for a part of which the consumers of crops in cities are taxed in enhanced 

 prices ; but in the end, both those that live in the country and such as dwell in cities, 

 will be punished alike for the common wrong of impoverishing the earth. Producers 

 and consumers must have a better knowledge of each other's wants and means ; and 

 instead of using the food of wheat plants to poison the denizens of cities, as is now wit- 

 nessed in Rochester and Bufi'alo, all fecal matters must be carried back to the needy 

 fields whence they were taken. From the city of Rochester go out into ditfercHt 

 sections of country, three canals, four or five railroads, and as many plankroads, for the 

 cheap distribution of concentrated manure. With these advantages, why may not the 

 average yield of wheat, within thirty miles of the city, be brought up to 33 bushels per 

 acre ? To achieve this result, and njore than double the value of all the real estate in 

 Rochester and Monroe county, requires but the application of a little common sense, 



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