74 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



of considerable trade, there bein^ some 

 twenty stores, good flour mill, &c. Potatoes 

 are one of the staple crops of this town. One 

 farmer informs me that in his school district 

 the farmers will average more than a thou 

 sand bushels each. At East Newport Depot 

 they have bought and sent to Bangor more 

 than twenty-five thousand bushels, and at the 

 Village more than four times as many. 



The profit of the business, and the spirit in 

 ■which it is prosecuted, may be illustrated by 

 a single instance that came under my notice. 

 Two young men, brothers, bought one hun- 

 dred acres of land in Stetson, a town adjoin- 

 ing Newport, for four hundred dollars. They 

 cut wood enough last fall to pay for the same. 

 The wood was hauled to the railroad and sold. 

 Last spring they burned up the brush, planted 

 patatoes, and this fall they dug seven hundred 

 bushels, which they sold for eighty cents per 

 bushel. On the same field they had a patch 

 of white beans, from which they harvested 

 about twenty bushels. They say they have a 

 good "camp," well furnished with everything 

 but a woman ; a deficiency that the young 

 ladies of the neighborhood will probably soon 

 take measures to supply. F. 



Stetson, Me., Dec. U, 1868. 



CLOVEB IN" KOTATION. 

 In reply to a New York correspondent of 

 the Country Gentleman, a farmer in Bucks 

 county, Penn., writes to that paper, that far- 

 mers in his section introduce clover less fre- 

 quently into the rotation than formerly. At 

 a Farmers' Club, where nearly a score of far- 

 mers were present who had tried clover, the 

 unanimous testimony was that it was becoming 

 more and more uncertain, while blue or wire 

 grass was taking possession of the soil — in- 

 deed, every one said he had been forced to 

 abandon the growth of clover. The writer 

 says : — 



Some observations of my own may help to 

 throw light on the subject. There are two 

 fields on our farm which have been cultivated 

 almost from the time of the first settlement by 

 the Quakers under Penn, nearly two hundred 

 years ago. One of these fields is of the red 

 shale or old red sand-stone formation, and on 

 this field clover has never failed with ordinary 

 care. The other field, and indeed the rest of 

 the cultivated land, is the diluvial soil of the 

 Delaware Valley, which is here a rather light, 

 or sandy gravel loam, thirty feet in depth. In 

 the new field, cleared within fifty years, no 

 diflicultv is experienced (in the ordinary rota- 

 tion) in securing a good catch of clover. In 

 the old field clover has failed in a greater or 

 less degree for twenty years, yet a part of the 

 same lot of ground was reserved some eight or 

 ten years ago as a suitable piece on which to 



practice soiling. Sowed corn, rye, millet, 

 &c., were raised in different succession for 

 five or six years. But the constant diminution 

 of the crops at last revealed what theory did 

 not, that the continued working of so light a 

 soil decreased its fertility faster than an annu- 

 al liberal supply of manure could replenish it. 

 I then seeded it to rye and clover. The rye 

 was a light crop, but the clover has been the 

 admiration of all who have seen it for two 

 years, and bids fair to do well another year. 



AGEICULTUKAIi ITEMS. 



— Solomon advises the sluggard to go to the 

 ant ; but the shiftless in our day generally go to 

 their "uncle." 



— The experience of this year proves that wheat 

 can be raised profitably in Maine. The midge has 

 not troubled the crops to any great extent. 



— An oak in Lawrence, Kansas, is nine feet in 

 diameter and thirty in circumference, and the 

 lowest limbs are forty feet from the ground. 



— In a journey through Illinois, D. B. Walsh, 

 Esq., the State Entomologist, discovered that the 

 oyster-shell bark-louse, cannot permanently ex- 

 ist in the Southern Jaalf of the State. Trees in- 

 fested with this insect, taken from the Northern 

 part a year ago, were found to be nearly or entirely 

 free from them, nothing remains but the old dry 

 scales. 



—The Hinesburgh, Vt., cheese factory worked 

 the past season 139 days, and manufactured in that 

 time, 1157 cheeses, averaging a fraction over fifty 

 pounds each. About one-half of the cheeses made 

 were sent to market by the company, mostly to 

 Burchard & Co., of Boston, it selling in that place 

 from 15.^ to 17i cents per pound. The total amount 

 of money received for the sale of cheese, and gain 

 on hogs fed at the factory was $19,543.69. The 

 number of cows furnishing milk for the factory 

 varied from 250 to 600. The total number of 

 pounds of milk manufactured was 1,219,286 ; total 

 pounds of cheese made 123,093 ; being nine and 

 niue-tenths pound of milk to one pound of cheese. 



— Mr. Thomas Reynolds, of Hadley, Mass., has 

 recentl}' lost three cattle through a disease which 

 is strange in that locality. The cattle have all died 

 early in the morning, having exhibited no previ- 

 ous indications of bad health, and having eaten 

 well the evening before. A post mortem examina- 

 tion shows a disordered digestion, and that the 

 coatings of the stomach and of the intestines are 

 much diseased, also the liver and gall bladder, 

 the latter being thickened. The lungs appear per- 

 fectly healthy. This disease resembles, in some 

 of its aspects, the Texas cattle disease. But as 

 poison is said to produce similar effects, it remains 

 to be determined whether these cattle died from 

 that or from some other cause. These cattle came 

 from Vermont, where they were pastured during 

 the past summer. 



