1858. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



WASTE OF SEWAGE AND FARM-YAKD 



MANURE. 



In your journal of the 19th of January last, a 

 gentleman, of Falmouth, stated as follows : 



"Seeing that Messrs. Gibbs, as British agents 

 of the Peruvian Government, have raised the 

 price of guano £2 per ton, would it not be well 

 to know if Messrs. Barrodia Brothers, the United 

 States agents, have done the same, the consump- 

 tion there being about one-third of that here ? 

 Brother Jonathan is not likely to stand it. Tak- 

 ing the imports of both countries at 400,000 tons, 

 it would be £800,000 out of the farmers' pockets 

 for this year. The freight and cost of shipping 

 it are the same as when sold at £9 per ton." 



Is not this enough to arouse and to open the eyes 

 and ears of every farmer in England, and to forth- 

 with preserve every particle of manure that is, or 

 can be, made upon a farm ? Nay, let each and 

 every farmer preserve the black water, which is 

 the essence of the manure, and convey it upon 

 the farm. The sewage of the metropolis, con- 

 taining 2,500,000 inhabitants, is worth at least 

 £3,000,000 yearly, which goe« to manure the 

 sea, instead of going back to the land which pro- 

 duced it. 



The great .igriculturist, I mean the far-famed 

 Mr. Coke, the late Earl of Leicester, M'isely said, 

 the more meat a plowed poor-land farmer sent 

 to Smithfield, the more corn he would be enabled 

 to sell per acre at Mark Lane. Convert plenty 

 of corn and cake into meat ; as the value of farm- 

 yard manure is in proportion to what it is made 

 of. If cattle cat straw alone, the dung is straw 

 alone, the cattle are straw, the farm is straw, and 

 the farmer is straw — and they are all straw to- 

 gether, said the great cultivator, ]SIr. Coke, who 

 lived before his day. 



Wonders are yet to be done in agriculture by 

 a combination of agricultural chemistry, botany, 

 geology and other sciences, &-c. — branches of ag- 

 riculture. Steam, gas and the telegraph are the 

 only three steps towards a great mountain. And 

 let the readers consider that the value of bones, 

 guano, and many other artificial manures, were 

 not known a century back to the cultivators of 

 the soil. The wheels of Nature and Time were 

 never made to stand still or roll backward ; and 

 little is known in agriculture to what is yet to 

 know ; agriculture may truly be said to be in its 

 infancy. The scientific implements in husbandry 

 now exhibited, denote what I say — implements 

 that were not known half a century back. — J/«rA; 

 liune Express. 



and work well in such hives ; that the third, (es- 

 pecially if quite large,) would have so much diffi- 

 culty in holding fast, that they lost more time in 

 swarming out and being re-hived, than all the ad- 

 vantage of smooth hives for the whole. Anoth- 

 er risk : Every time a swarm leaves a hive, the 

 chance of going to the woods increases. If one 

 in six, or even ten, is thus lost in consequence, 

 true economy would seem to dictate a rough hive. 

 A large swarm of bees contains several thous- 

 ands, and their weight when first hived, (before 

 any combs are made,) must be supported by a 

 few hundreds. If nothing but a smooth surface 

 is presented for their claws to lay hold of, it is 

 easy to imagine the difficulty ; and their frequent- 

 ly falling in a mass to the floor, interferes materi- 

 ally with their labors, even when they do not 

 leave. M. Quinby. 



>S^. Johnsville, N. Y. 



For the Xeic England Farmer. 



CHEAP BEE HIVES. 



"Amicus," in the Farmer of Nov. 21, says : "I 

 must differ from Mr. Quinby respecting the econ- 

 omy of planing a bee-hive inside." lie reasons 

 very consistently to all appearance, showing how 

 much labor of the bees is saved, &c., and supposes 

 he can see an actual difl'erence in results in favor 

 of a planed hive. I fear "Amicus's" experience is 

 not to be depended on ; he reports only one case. 

 I did not recommend leaving a his-e rough inside, 

 (as so much labor for the bees, seemingly, for 

 nothing.) without, as I thought, good reasons. I 

 had found that althoutrh two swarms micrht stav 



For the 'Sew England Fanner. 

 CARROTS, 2000 BUSHELS PER ACRE! 



Friend Broavn: — I saw in your December 

 N. E. Farmer a piece relating to carrots, over 

 the signature of "Henry Lee, in Waltham." In 

 18.52, I purchased a farm near my residence in 

 this town ; on one-fourth of an acre, had been 

 raised carrots, for several years before I made 

 the pui'chase. I have continued to raise them on 

 the same piece every year since. The land is 

 rich, but rather stony, having a thick surface of 

 loam resting on clay and gravel subsoil. In fact, 

 the soil is very much like Mr. Lee's, and has been 

 cultivated like his in every respect. I have plowed 

 the land the last two years, three times each year, 

 with a jNIichigan plow. I gave four hand weed- 

 ings, and sowed the rows only 12 inches apart. 

 The first three years, I raised about 175 bushels 

 each year. The fourth, I plowed with a Michi- 

 gan plow, deep, and raised 200 bushels. Last 

 spring, I plowed with the same plow, giving a 

 furrow 13 inches, and I raised, by actual measure- 

 ment, 342 bushels, or at the rate of 1368 bushels 

 to the acre. The carrots were the largest ever 

 raised in this section, and were many of them 

 over two feet long, and proportionally large. 

 This fall, I have enlarged the piece to 100 rods, 

 and sunk all the rocks 18 inches below the sur- 

 face, at an expense of 840, — and if I am as suc- 

 cessful next year as I have been this, I shall be 

 disappointed if I do not raise at the rate of 2O0O 

 bushels per acre. I am satisfied by my own ex- 

 perience, that carrots can be raised in larger crops 

 by planting the same piece every year. 



In the words of Mr. Lee, "Why have they not 

 been more generally and more extensively culti- 

 vated in a State where feed for milch cows and 

 horses is so extremely high ?" 



S. D. DATENPOrvT. 



IIo2)ldnton, Dec. 10, 1857. 



Height of Colts. — A very reliable rule to 

 judge the height a colt will attain to when full 

 groM-n, is the following: When the colt gets to 

 be three weeks old, or as soon as it is perfectly 

 straightened in its limbs, measure from the edge 

 of the hair on the hoofs to the middle of the first 

 joint ; and for every inch, it will grow to the 



