42 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



raspberry, or some new fangled strawberry, 

 than is used in all the wheat discussions for a 

 decade. In short, if it were not for the bag of 

 •wheat which we sometimess see tucked away 

 in some back corner of the Floral Hall at our 

 County Fairs, and the occasional newspaper 

 article referred to, we should almost think that 

 the subject of wheat raising was becoming ig- 

 nored altogether. — Prairie Farmer. 



Remarks. — This is putting it pretty strong 

 for a paper printed in the "Grain Emporium 

 of the World," which Chicago is sometimes 

 claimed to be. But is our agricultural liter- 

 ature as deficient as the pen of this ready 

 writer charges .^ We have on our shelves a 

 stately volume of 432 pages entitled the Amer- 

 ican Wheat Culturist, by S. E. Todd, devoted 

 exclusively "to the grain that forms 'the staff 

 of life;' " Mr. Klippart, Secretary of the Ohio 

 Board of Agriculture, has also written a vol- 

 ume on this neglected plant, and in many ag- 

 ricultural books and papers, no inconsiderable 

 space is devoted to the cultivation of wheat. 

 On referring to the Monthly New England 

 Farmer for 18G7 we find the index points to 

 thirty-seven pages for articles on wheat, and 

 we presume that it is incidentally alluded to in 

 many other places in connection with other sub- 

 jects, and probably about the same prominence 

 has been given to the subject in our columns 

 during the year now drawing to a close. We 

 agree with the Prairie Farmer man that the 

 growing of wheat ought to be "studied, writ- 

 ten about, and talked over" more than It has 

 been, and we Invite all New England farmers 

 who have succeeded In raising wheat without 

 "killing the soil," to speak out, and help us 

 talk over the subject. The success that has at- 

 tended the cultivation of wheat in New Eng- 

 land during the few past years has been suf- 

 ficiently encouraging to justify the assertion 

 that wheat raising is not "a lost art" even 

 among the farmers "between the AUeghanies 

 and the sea." 



the_ saddle and trained to a walking gait. 

 This Is also the case In all the Western States, 

 and perhaps might have been so in New Eng- 

 land when our grandmothers rode to meeting 

 on a pillion behind our grandfathers. But 

 one-horse wagons have put horseback riding 

 out of fashion, and now a good walking horse 

 is more rare than one that can trot a mile in 

 2.40. 



At the Springfield, Mass., Horse Show of 

 1860, the writer was one of the committee to 

 award prizes to the best walking horses. Out 

 of seventeen entered, the committee found but 

 one which was considered a first-rate walker. 

 This was a Morrill mare, which walked five 

 miles an hour with ease. Two others were 

 fair walkers, and the rest knew no gait that 

 could be called walking. At the New York 

 State Fair the same state of facts was again 

 developed. A letter from Wisconsin says : 

 "I think horses trained to walk fast would be 

 a greater benefit to our farmprs In general 

 than fast trotters, as almost all their work has 

 to be done with a walk." I once knew a man 

 in Massachusetts, who, before the railroads 

 were built, kept from two to four teams at work 

 on the road, and never allowed them to trot 

 at all, and made the distance In quicker time 

 than his neighbors, who made their horses trot 

 at every convenient place. He said that when 

 a hoi'se commenced to walk after a trot he 

 walked much slower than his common gait If 

 kept on a walk, and thereby lost more than he 

 gained. Will farmers think of this and pay 

 more attention to walking horses ? — Farmer'' s 

 Home Journal. 



WALKING HORSES. 



The best gait a horse ever had for everyday 

 use. Is a good walk. It Is a gait that not one 

 in ten possess. Colts arc not trained to walk 

 in all of the Eastern States. Young America 

 wants more speed. Kentucky has more good 

 walking horses than any other State, for there 

 horseback travelling has long been In fashion 

 for men and women, over a country where 

 muddy roads at times rendered any other gait 

 impossible, and so horses have been bred for 



"GKAIN-KELLED" HOKSES. 



Some years ago a man lived in this vicinity 

 who had kept livery stables both in New l''ork 

 and Philadelphia, and he owned one of the 

 poorest grass farms you would wish to see, 

 but well watered. He would buy horses In 

 those cities from gentlemen that kept but one 

 horse, — horses that had had a good deal of 

 work on t-he road as family horses, and were 

 fed very highly of grain, and had been in the 

 city some four, six or more years, and were 

 what horsemen called grain-killed. He would 

 bring them up generally in the spring, and let 

 them run at pasture, and I have seen from six 

 to ten horses In a field for weeks together, 

 where you could not see a green thing, unless 

 some weed or brier that the horses would not 

 eat. He would keep them just alive for eight, 

 twelve or more months, as the case might be, 

 but at least eight months, and put them in the 

 stable about Feb. 15th or March 1st, having 

 let them run in the barn-yard after snow came, 

 but housed from storms. He would begin 

 feeding a few carrots at first, and then add 

 grain after being ground, but never feeding 

 very highly, and in a few weeks the horses 

 would look full, with smooth coats and well 

 filled between the ribs, and in May or June 



