1859. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



423 



become a good sized tree before it bears another 

 particle of fruit. It seems to be out of season 

 that trees should grow thrifty and fruit heavily 

 at the same time ; and my advice to your corres- 

 pondent is, to wait patiently a few years longer, 

 and let his trees grow. They are doubtless pay- 

 ing a much better interest on the investment, in 

 that way, than by an earlier development of fruit. 

 If they are of the kinds which ordinarily bear 

 well, there is little danger hut that they will, in 

 a very few years more, amply repay all the pa- 

 tience and care which their owners may devote 

 to them. 



I know there are exceptions to all rules, in 

 fruit-growing, as in everything else. There are 

 some soils, though they are very rare indeed, 

 which will not apparently produce apples or 

 pears. It is generally supposed that such soils 

 lack entirely the ferruginous principle. Perhaps 

 if j'our correspondent would try the experiment 

 of scattering iron filings, or cinders from a black- 

 smith's forge, freely around two or three of his 

 trees, digging them freely into the earth so that 

 they may come in contact with the roots, he may 

 soon ascertain whether his soil lacks the essen- 

 tial element of iron. I have knovrn iron spikes 

 driven into plum trees, to produce fruit when 

 they had long been apparently barren ; the iron 

 acting, evidently, as a kind of tonic to the sap. 

 But the instances are very rare in which thrifty, 

 well cultivated trees, of the right varieties, fail 

 to produce fruit at the proper stage of their 

 growth. E. C. P. 



Somerville, 3Iass. 



A PINE GRAIN SIFTER AND ASSORTEK 



There is a great deal written and said now-a- 

 days about agricultural education, and agricultu- 

 ral colleges, just as though a young man could 

 be put through a course of academic instruction, 

 and then through the routine of college learning, 

 and be turned out upon the world a good farm- 

 er, or in fact, a good anything else. Few men 

 ever reach the quarter-deck excepting through 

 the forecastle. Genius outruns mere learning 

 every day, and gathers the harvest, while learn- 

 ing, or book education, merely, lags behind. But 

 genius and learning combined, master all things. 



The idea extensively prevails that it is hard 

 work, year in and year out, that makes the farm- 

 er, — hard hands, neglected dress and contempt 

 of refinement. This, too, is all folly. At his 

 work he should have whole, but strong and sub- 

 stantial garments suitable to the occasion,— but 

 at church or town-meeting, why should not his 

 dress be as fine and fashionable as any respect- 

 able person wears ? 



Then the farmer should be something of a 

 merchant, too, understanding the qualities of the 

 products in which he deals, their prices, and how 

 best to arrange and prepare them for market, in 

 order that they shall return him a fair profit. 



We are acquainted with two men occupying 



the same range of land, and their farms opposite 

 each other, who happened to carry one hundred 

 and eighteen barrels of apples, each, to market 

 the same fall, and during the same time. One 

 of these men got a certain sum for his apples, 

 and the other got just $118,00 more, or an aver- 

 age of one dollar per barrel more! One had 

 sufficient mercantile skill to lead him to assort 

 his crop into grades, put them into clean and 

 uniform barrels, and fix a price upon each class, 

 and in consequence of this skill realized nearly 

 double that his neighbor did on the same amount 

 and quality of article. 



We saw a man in South Market Street the 

 other day, sifting beans, and as he seemed to 

 have an interested audience about him, we joined 

 the group to look, listen and learn. He had sev- 

 eral barrels before him and a sort of tray-like 

 box made of pine board, and filled with wire 

 sieves. He rattled his sieves and chatted fluent- 

 ly about his business, telling his audience that 

 he purchased the lot of beans before him, had sift- 

 ed out four bushels of defective and small ones, 

 worth as much as four bushels of the best yel- 

 low corn, and had sold the remainder for what 

 the whole lot had cost! It had taken him two 

 hours to do the work, and he had realized $2,00 

 an hour for his labor ! These are but examples 

 of one kind of learning which the farmer needs. 

 Boston market is the best institution in which 

 to acquire it, of any that we are acquainted with. 

 Such was the train of thought suggested by wit- 

 nessing the operations of our friend, the bean 

 assorter. 



We had a further curiosity, however, to grati- 

 fy, beside listening to his speech. The little ma- 

 chine — if machine it could be called, that had not 

 a bolt or screw in it — was before us, and on ex- 

 amination we found that the operator could mix 

 half a pint of twelve different kinds of seeds, 

 such as marrowfat, blue pod and pea beans, split 

 beans, peas and split peas, coffee, buckwheat, rye, 

 oats, linseed and grass seed, and in less than two 

 minutes from the time the mixed contents were 

 put in, they were again separated and discharged 

 into twelve boxes with almost unerring certainty. 



If these simple contrivances were in common 

 use among farmers, what a mass of unsaleable 

 oats, barley, wheat, rye, buckwheat, coffee, rice, 

 peas, beans, &c., might be kept at home and fed 

 to stock, the cost of freight to market, and fre- 

 quently back again, saved, while the good arti- 

 cle, separated from the bad, would bring more 

 money than the whole, when sold together. 



An Oswego, N. Y., dealer bi'ought a lot of beans 

 to Boston market, and in consequence of imper- 

 fect cleaning up, and of shrivelled beans, they 

 were unsaleable. He passed them through a 

 sifter and assorter, got out six bushels of defec- 



