1869. 



NEW ENGLAND FAE,]MER. 



181. 



For the ^ew England Farmer. 



STOCK BREEDING AND "WOOD GRO"W- 



INQ. 

 The fol'owin^ nbBtract of the discuseion of the Spring- 

 field, Vt., Farmers' Club, at it8 last meeting et the 

 house of their Treasurer, D. O. Gill, Presidtnt L. G. 

 Cutlfr, in the chair, has been kindly furnished for 

 our columns. 



C. Horace Hubbard, Agricultural Editor 

 of the Record and Farrmr, opened the dis- 

 cust^ion. He spoke at length of the principles 

 of breeding. He thought it unwise to use 

 any grade male for breeding, no matter how 

 fine tlie animal, as grades are incapable of 

 begetting their equal upon females of inferior 

 blood to themselves. He would always breed 



.up, not down, having the male a thoroughbred. 



Mr. H. M. Arms concurred in the remarks 

 of Mr. Hubbard, and gave an interesting ac- 

 count of his method of breeding Short-horns. 

 He believed good care and feeding essential 

 to good bleeding. Would never expose an 

 animal in poor condition. Both parents should 

 be strong and vigorous. 



A. G. Gill said in order to breed for labor 

 or fleetness, the sire should be a laboring an- 

 imal, or at least have a plenty of vigorous ex- 

 ercise. 



Mr. R. Colburn suggested that by drying 

 off cows prematurely, in order to increase 

 their condition before breeding them, in 

 time their milk producing qualities would be 

 injured. 



J. R. Walker spoke of producing the dif- 

 ferent sexes with some degree of certainty. 

 When the female was coupled in the first of 

 her heat, the otffpring would be likely to be a 

 female, but when coupled in the last the pro- 

 geny would oftener be male. 



D. A. (Jill, Esq.,' spoke of the influence of 

 imagination upon the female at the time of 

 coupling. His father had two bay mares, 

 which were coupled with a bay sire, all of 

 bay ancestors. Both colts had white legs, 

 white noses, each a blear eye, and one of 

 them a white ring around the body. At the 

 time of coupling, there was running in the 

 highway, and near his bouse, a ^orry gelding, 

 belonging to a neighbor, marked with a white 

 nose, white legs, a blear eye and a white ring 

 around the body. 



Henry Safford said Vermont breeders ex- 

 celled in ria^ing horses and sheep. He 

 thought it ill advised to use mares with heaves 

 or blemishes for breeding, as the bad qualities 

 were more apt to be transmitted to the off"- 

 spring than the good ones. The Vermont 

 Merino sheep, he said, was no humbug. Al- 

 though they have been sold at prices entirely 

 beyond their value, he considered them good 

 properly at their true value. By caring for 

 every want, and judiciously coupling through 

 many years, they have been brought to a very 

 high standard of excellence, and they would 

 continue to be sought by more careless breed- 



ers to give tone and energy to their neglected 

 flocks. 



A short essay was read by J. R. Walker on 

 "Wood as a Crop." He believed that trees 

 could be profitably grown as a crop, and cited 

 an instance in town where $50 worth per acre 

 had been grown in sixteen years. He had 

 collected the statistics of the town, numbering 

 about 3000 inhabitants, and found that in 

 wood and ties about 9000 cords are used an- 

 nually. In sawed lumber the town is now 

 using at the rate of 2,064,000 feet per an- 

 num. Ellis, Britton & Eaton use for manu- 

 facturing cabs 750,000 feet. To furnish all 

 this wood and timber would require 2o5 acres 

 at 50 cords per acre. Should ttie present rate 

 of consumption continue, and the whole 

 amount be drawn from Springfield, the whole 

 present supply would be exhausted in 14 years. 

 Hence he argued that woodland should be 

 fenced and protected, and trees grown upon 

 the rough and poor pasture lands. As an in- 

 vestment for the next 50 years, he believed 

 woodland would be a profitable one, and 

 young growing timber a better legacy to leave 

 to our children, than bank stock netting 10 

 per c nt. j. u. w. 



Springfield, Vt., Feb. 8, 1889. 



For the New England Farmee, 

 EAST VIRGINIA. 



I have for two years read your paper with 

 much satisfaction, directed to me at Charles- 

 town, Jefferson County, West Virginia. As 

 1 have removed, please change direction of 

 of paper to Matthews Cotu-t House, Hicks' 

 Wharf, Virginia. 



Many persons are writing to me, making 

 inquiries as to lands in this section, more than 

 1 can answer. They inquire, first as to soil, 

 health, pijce, timber, stone, fi;h, oysters, «&;c. 

 Next, they ask, would emigrants be well re- 

 ceived, and inquire about labor, and a thou- 

 sand other things. I wish to say I am no land 

 buyer, land seller, or land agent, and must 

 caution the public that all taid by such inter- 

 ested persons must be taken with many grains 

 of allowance. 



As to the quality of sand, the soil is gener- 

 ally light and sandy, and much of It requires 

 draining, on the low grounds of some of the 

 rivers, or rather the estuaries that run back 

 from the ocean a few miles, genei ally navaga- 

 ble. The soil is good, very good. The low 

 grounds In the vicinity of salt water are more 

 healthy, probably, than any part of New Eng- 

 land. Back from the water, chills in autumn 

 may be expected, either by those acclimated 

 or not acclimated. Timber is pine, oak, gum, 

 chestnut, hickory, and on land thrown out of 

 cultivation, of which there are large quanti- 

 ties, a dense growth of pine exclusively. 

 There are no stones at all. Fruit trees grow 

 much more vigorously than even in the rich 

 lands of the valleys of Virginia, such as ap- 



