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364 THE GENESEE FARMEK. 



and feeding tlie young and needy plants until they arrive at full maturity. One may 

 have just food enough to rear and fatten two pigs, and with proper care and skill he 

 may have each gain a pound a day in weight for three hundred days. If -he shall 

 attempt to rear and fiitteu four pigs instead of two, they may be grown ; but to fatten 

 them is out of the question. After they have reached a certain size, to keep so much 

 flesh and blood alive, and from losing weight, will consume all the food within their 

 reach, and of course such consumption is without profit to their owner. This waste of 

 food and of time lessens the amount of meat and fat produced full fifty per cent.; for the 

 four pigs must live a,ll their allotted days, and eat every day, although they grow but 

 half of the time, and only half grow wliile about it. What is true of four pigs, is 

 equally true of four or five million wheat plants, pastured on a supply of nutriment 

 equal to the full development of just half the number. You get a little more straw, 

 more vegetable bone, (silicates) and a greater number of heads, or ears of grain ; but 

 beyond all question, nature gives you fewer and smaller seeds, less flour and less gluten 

 and starch for bread. 



This brings us to the subject of agricultural physiology — one on which, strange to 

 say, no book has ever been published in the United States. Wheat culture is insepa- 

 rably blended with the deep science of feeding, rearing, and fattening all living things 

 on the farm. If we were asked what crop is best cultivated in this country, we should 

 answer that it is not wheat, nor corn, nor tobacco, nor potatoes, but cotton. The cleanest 

 culture in the United States may be seen in cotton fields, which have been properly 

 plowed, hoed, "chopped out," and otherwise fairly attended. Tull chopped out his 

 young wheat with hoes whose blades were only four inches long, having a sharp thin 

 edge. He would be regarded in Western New York as a large wheat grower ; and 

 forty years' experience taught him the extreme folly of having a poor pasture in the 

 soil, and too many pfents to the square yard. Subsoiling he did not understand by 

 name ; but no other agricultural writer ever complained so much and so earnestly of his 

 neglectfid plowmen who would not do justice to his wheat beds — stir the earth deep 

 enough and make it fine enough, nor roll it properly between the rows. The surface 

 of tilled ground needs compression, for wheat. 



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BARN -YARD MANURE. 



The liquid and solid excrements of animals contain all the elements of plants in a state 

 best suited for assimilation, and the great practical question of the farmer is how to 

 preserve them without loss and apply them to the land in the best condition. Our 

 present system of barn-yard management is most objectionable ; by it the greater part 

 of the liqiud excrements are lost, and by injudicious fermentation a large quantity of the 

 organic gases escape, and the soluble, and consequently most valuable, jwrtion of the 

 manni-e is washed away by drenching rains. These three evils every one familiar with 

 farm management must have observed. The loss to the individual by such a reprehen- 

 sible practice is great, and, viewed as a national evil, is most appalling. The direct loss 

 to the farmers themselves, in the aggregate, is immense ; while the indirect loss to the 

 country is positively inestimable. 



No fjxrming can be profitable where the manure is thus shamefully wasted ; nothing 

 being plainer than that the crops of the farm and the profits of the farmer are in direct 

 proportion to the amount and value of the manure made on the farm. The great aim 

 of the farmer in the management of barn-yard manure, should be — first, To preserve all 

 the liquid ; Second, To keep up a slow fermentation, never letting the heap heat or fer- 

 ment violently, and thus throw ofi" its ammonia; Third, To prevent leaching during 

 heavy rains and meltinsf snows. 



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