334 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



July 



measure upon the salt hay, in order to save the 

 English to sell, and this they will not constantly 

 and freely eat, unless when kept down somewhere 

 in the neighborhod of the starvation point. In con- 

 sequence of this, their droppings are cold, watery 

 and inert, and they generally remain through the 

 year, neither fit for the dairy nor the shambles, en- 

 joying nothing themselves, and a lean and gaunt 

 reproach to their owners. Such is the system, — 

 and instead of elevating the farmer and affording 

 him a profit, its tendency is constantly to impover- 

 ish and discourage. The hardest working farmers 

 he ever knew were those owning and cutting salt 

 meadows. 



As to the use of muck as a fertilizer, he thought 

 comparatively few as yet properly appreciate it, or 

 well understand its composition and powers, and 

 the true way to use it. The muck of our swamps 

 is a mixture of mineral and vegetable matter, — 

 but principally the latter. It is formed by the 

 growth of moss and annual grasses or rank aquatic 

 vegetables, of dead leaves, rotten trunks, and 

 branches of trees, where in some cases, a heavy 

 vegetable growth has been burned and the ashes 

 left, together with the refuse mould and mineral 

 matter of the hills, washed down through long ages 

 into the common receptacle — the swamp. Here 

 then are the materials we need as fertilizers stored 

 up for us in reserve like the coal beds, and waiting 

 for light and air to become the food which our 

 plants require. Dana says, it is highly concen- 

 trated vegetable food, and that when the state in 

 which this food exists is examined, it is found not 

 only partly cooked but seasoned. Peat ashes con- 

 tain all the inorganic principles of plants which 

 are insoluble. Twenty samples of peat examined 

 by Dr. C. T. Jackson, afforded an average of 72 

 vegetable matter, 24 ashes, in 100 parts dried. 

 Dana also says — and he has had ample experi- 

 ence to enable him to judge correctly — that equal 

 bulks of peat and cowdung do not materially dif- 

 fer ; that the salts of lime are about the same, 

 while the alumina, oxide of iron, magnesia in the 

 selicates added to the salts of lime, make the total 

 amount of salts, in round numbers, equal that of 

 cowduDg. That, "departing from cowdung and 

 wandering through all the varieties of animal and 

 vegetable manures, we land in a peat-bog. The 

 substance under our feet is analyzed, and found to 

 be cowdung, without its murky breath of cow-odor, 

 or the power of generating ammonia." The sub- 

 ject of muck as a fertilzer has received attention 

 from many able minds in this country, and in Eng- 

 land, and all accord in the opinion, that it is among 

 the most valuable materials for increasing the fer- 

 tility of the farm. Considering its nearness to the 

 place where it is wanted to be used, and to the fact 

 that it is a part of the farm itself, which was not 

 paid for at the rate of $50 per ton, it ought to 



stand first in importance to the farmer, of all the 

 fertilizers he uses, — or at least side by side with 

 the droppings of his stalls. 



Mr. Brown concluded by an earnest appeal to the 

 farmer to experiment more carefully, and to use more 

 extensively, and in so doing they would come to the 

 conclusion that Muck is, in reality, the Mother of 

 the Meal Chest. 



For the New England Farmer. 



GIFFOKD MORGAN HORSES. 



An inquirer in the last Farmer wants light on 

 this the best branch of the Morgan race of horses. 



The original Major Gifford was raised hy Ziba 

 Gifford, of East Randolph, Vermont, in the same 

 neighborhood where the first horse ever known as 

 "Morgan" was owned and kept, and I think, died, 

 by Justin Morgan. (Hence the name "Morgan" 

 was given the horse.) Major Gifford was a noble 

 animal, and his stock is much sought after by breed- 

 ers in the eastern part of Vermont. He was after- 

 wards owned by C. Blodgett, Chelsea, Vermont, 

 and thence taken to New Hampshire, (Walpole, I 

 think.) and died at an advanced age. His stock is 

 very generally of a beautiful chestnut color, very 

 plump or well proportioned, often quite gay, and 

 invariably possessing great power of endurance. — 

 The old "Green Mountain" formerly owned by Si- 

 las Hale, of Royalston, Massachusetts, is of his .«:ire, 

 and though now at an advanced age, and by his 

 excessive use is now unfit for trotting on the course, 

 yet makes a fine appearance, and leaves abundant 

 marks of his superiority of blood, in the splendid 

 colts of his sire. He is now owned by a joint 

 stock company of farmers in Williamstown, Ver- 

 mont, and probably possesses the traits of "Major 

 Gifford" as much as any other horse of the same 

 stock. 



There are "Gifford Morgans" in ever}- section of 

 New England, and in various places at the West, 

 each claiming various degrees of kindred to old 

 "Major Gifford" and like other horses claim to pos- 

 sess "more Morgan blood than any other horse now 

 living." "Major Gifford" was sired by the origi- 

 nal "Morgan" mentioned above, and one of the four 

 or five stock horses raised from a "Morgan." 



Ferrisburg, Ft, May 30, 1856. P. J. 



Log Houses. — A correspondent of the Boston 

 Journal, writing from Minnesota Territory, gives 

 the following description of a superior style of log 

 houses, which may interest persons going West : 



"Nothing is less attractive in appearance than an 

 ordinary log house, the logs being tumbled togeth- 

 er as fast as possible, and then plastered over with 

 mud. But give to a Swede the making of a house 

 from logs, and he turns one out which makes it very 

 doubtful to me whether it is not really the best 

 house that can be made of wood. The reason of 

 such a difference is, that in their own country, as 

 they tell me, their houses of wood are never con- 

 structed in any other manner. With a few simple 

 tools and principally the axe, they hew down the 

 logs to a thickness of about five inches (making of 

 them in fact a sort of plank) and then joint, pin and 

 fit them together with a nicety which our best car- 

 penters would find it hard to equal, and which 



