Vol. 6. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



23 



eympathy for him, in view of his condition, will man- 

 ifest it by their deeds !" 



These, and similar remarks interspersed liberally 

 throughout his columns, may be considered amusing 

 sallies of good humor, or perhaps some may excuse 

 them as "eccentricities of genius ;" but candidly, 

 (and I speak now as a sincere friend of Mr. Bate- 

 ham's,) they will confer but little honor or dignity 

 on cither him or his paper ; on the contrary, will 

 they not indicate a sort of personal vanity, that is 

 not wholly inoffensive, in these unromantic, matter- 

 of-fact times of ours ? In the good old days of chi- 

 valry it would have been less censurable. On the 

 whole, however, the 1st No. of friend Bateham's paper 

 does him credit in many respects ; and we bespeak 

 for him, as we most sincerely wish him, " all manner 

 of success." He deserves it well. He has entered 

 on a great field of labor. As Mr. Randall, in his let- 

 ter to Mr. B. eloquently and expressively remarks : 



" Ohio is the mightiest of the young sisterhood of 

 the westeln States. Her soil is fertile as that of the 

 fabled garden of Hesperides." 



That the efforts of Mr. Bateham, in this mighty 

 and fertile State will, and that the efforts of all 

 others who labor in any Vv^ay to promote the public 

 good, may be crowned with ample and merited suc- 

 cess, is the sincere wish of 



A FRIEND TO AGRICULTURE. 



VARIATION IN WHEAT-SCALES. 



Mr. Editor — I noticed in. your paper for January 

 an inquiry, by a farmer, whether the beams of wheat 

 scales are sealed. This is a question which I have 

 often heard asked, but never heard answered to my 

 eatisfaction. I had, this last fall, some wheat to dis- 

 pose of, and for my own satisfaction I weighed, 

 with a pair of small steelyards, which I have good 

 reason to believe correct, several half-bushels of the 

 grain, and found it vmiformly to hold out 3U| lbs. to 

 the half-bushfcl. The wheat was all thrashed in the 

 field, in one of Hall's machines, with Pitt's separa- 

 tor—drawn at once to the barn, and emptied upon 

 the floor. 



As soon as I had leisure, I cleaned it up for mar- 

 ket, and put it in bins in the granary. When it was 

 drawn away, it was put up in bags of just two bush- 

 els each, ail carefully measured by myself in one 

 half-bushel ; and there could have been but a very 

 elight error, if any at all. Nowfor the result. 



At one mill, twenty-six bushels held out but tiven- 

 tij-four bushels aad fifty pmiiuls. At another place, 

 thirty-six bushels by measure held out only thirty- 

 four btishels and ten pounds — this was at a mill that 

 paid extra for hauling past its neighbors, and was the 

 first and last load I drew past a mill for extra pay. 

 While at another mill (and I drew the rest of my 

 crop there) my half-bushel held out full measure and 

 a trifle over ! 



Now, what could make this difference ? Surely 

 five and a half per cent, is too much to put down for 

 " currents of air from above or below," unless there 

 were a special contrivance to have it blow up pretty 

 hard. I am at a loss to account for it, except by in- 

 accuracy, for I know my account by the measure was 

 correct. I have heard of long arms to scale-beams; 

 and the way in which the hopper is strung at the 

 end of the beam offers every facility for putting it 

 on a short arm. Could it be easily shifted, wheat- 

 eellers could right themselves by changing ends, and 

 at one load rectifying the error of the other. This 

 might be done if, instead of chains, the hopper and 



weight platform were slung with rods, so as to stand 

 erect while shifting ends with the beam. At any 

 rate, farmers must look to their interests in this 

 matter ; and I for one am not disposed to give all 

 all scale-beams the credit of being honest, because 

 they will stand level when unloaded, any more than 

 I would give my neighbor credit for honesty because 

 he stood fair with the world, while I caught him 

 robbing my pork-barrel. 



Scales can be made to turn with 1 -60,000th part 

 of their load ; but a far less delicate instrument will 

 answer for all our purposes, in ordinary affairs. All 

 we ought to ask is, ' a just balance and a just ephah.' 

 But I cannot but mistrust results so widely different 

 in respect to grain from the same bin, measured in 

 the same half-bushel, and with such precautions as 

 almost to preclude the possibility of mistake. 



I should, perhaps, have said, that the beam of the 

 scale which I believe to be correct was made by 

 Lewis Selye, of Rochester. 



Yours, fee, AGRICOLA. 



Victor, Jan. 1845. 



FARMERS' CLUBS. 



Mr. Editor — Having noticed in the last number 

 of the Farmer a suggestion to farmers' sons, wheth- 

 er it would not be well for them to form farmers' 

 clubs in their neighborhoods, during winter evenings, 

 I could no* repress the inclinaticn of saying a few 

 words upon the subject, expressive of my own opin- 

 ion — which is, that such clubs should be formed in 

 every town at least, and we wish they might be in 

 every school district in the Union. 



The why we would wish such a state of things to 

 exist is, that we know that where they do exist, and 

 have done so for any length of time, under prudent 

 management, results have arisen from them of a val- 

 uable and enduring character. Let us take a single 

 case for illustration : In a certain neighborhood, 

 somewhere in Christendom, (no difference where — 

 not, however, a hundred miles from Boston,) there 

 was a certain individual who had ventured so far into 

 the strange innovations of the age as to take an ag- 

 ricultural paper, and his was the only one left at the 

 office where it took its solitary pilgrimage. With 

 all the sympathy which a certain class of people al- 

 ways possess, poor neighbor A. was given up as a 

 gone case. He had become a " book farmer," and 

 they guessed he'd find out that book farming " wan't 

 what it was crack'd up to be" — at any rate, it 

 wouldn't support a-hody. And besides, them papers 

 wouldn't do for our soil, " that where they was writ- 

 ten was so very different," kc. &c., to the end of 

 the lingo. 



Farmer A., however, saw fit to differ from his 

 neighbors in these points, and, though thrown into a 

 very humble minority for venturing to exercise his 

 own good sense, he resolved that general good 

 should be the result of it. He careifully read his 

 papers, and brought the knowledge thus acquired 

 into practical action — not, however, without bring- 

 ing his judgment into action also — to make such va- 

 riations in modus operandi as his soil, climate, and 

 other causes required. The result was soon mani- 

 fest in the fertility of his fields, and the improvement 

 and prosperity of his flocks and herds. His neigh- 

 bors saiv the change that was going on with him, 

 yet they would attribute it to any cause (we might 

 mention a host of them actually supposed, but it is 

 not necessary) rather than to any benefit he had ob- 

 tained through the press. He reasoned with them, 



