THE GENESEE FARMER 



NOTES ON THE FEBRUARY NO. OF THE FARMER. 



Your leading article on the subject of Agricultural 

 Schools, is jusfand to the point. It is to be lamented 

 that farmer's sons, who must forever compose the 

 great bulk of community, are to have no better edu- 

 cation than can be picked up by a few month's desul- 

 tory teachings of perhaps beardless boys and untaught 

 pretenders, who often officiate in our common schools; 

 many of whom themselves learn B, while they are 

 teaching their pupils A. The subjects . taught in 

 a properly regulated Agricultural School, will not 

 simply rela\e to the ie*s and ates of science, but to 

 all the parts of practical knowledge, that compose 

 and create the business man and render them fit for 

 our future Legislators and Governors, Is it not to 

 be deprecated, that the whole of our legislative con- 

 cerns have to be managed by the learned professions, 

 one half of whom don't know a clevis from a coulter, 

 and but little of the practical wants of community ? 

 In the name of common justice let it be once tried, 

 if only as an experiment. 



Cabbage.— The analysis you gave of the plants 

 of the cabbage tribe, show from their constituents, 

 why their decomposition in cellars and pits are so 

 offensive and deleterious. They contain the elements 

 to form the most deadly miasmata. We knew a 

 family to perish by a most malignant fever, in an 

 entirely healthy neighborhood. On searching for 

 some local cause, a temporary pit under the floor was 

 found, containing a decaying mass of cabbage and 

 turneps, sending forth the most deadly exhalations. 

 Cellars should early in the spring be thoroughly 

 cleaned of every description of vegetable, ana well 

 ventilated. . 



Golden Dreams.— Your correspondent, in his spec- 

 ulations upon the amount and result of the great 

 influx of the precious metals ; must have been in- 

 dulging in a dose of exhilirating gas. _ He under- 

 rates or overrates every point. His estimate of the 

 circulating medium of the world is too low by half. 

 If he refers to gold only he is nearer the truth. The 

 produce of the mines of Europe and America, are at 

 the present time less than $30,000,000 annually. 

 The precious metals have not increased as fast in 

 proportion as population, since the year 1815, the 

 period of the termination of the great wars of 

 Europe and America ; hence the general decline of 

 prices since that time. The precious metals as a 

 circulating medium are daily declining in amount, 

 from the°great demand for the uses of the arts. 

 The amount required to absorb bank paper, in case 

 it should become extremely plenty, would consume 

 over $400,000,000 in Europe and America ; quite an 

 item for the " golden shower,"' and when we consider 

 that were the agrarian system to prevail, and all the 

 o-old and silver in the world were equally distributed, 

 there would not be quite seven dollars per head : 

 there would be lee-way for a good many drops of the 

 golden shower, before we should all go mad as he 

 prognosticates. 



In the commerce and exchanges of the world, 

 there must be something to represent property and 

 value, and it matters not whether it is gold or rags, 

 so long as the conventional notions of the world call 

 it good. Tommy Nokes' paper is good only as far 

 as Tommy Nokes is known, but the auriferous bars 

 and coin are universal, and will crowd paper off the 

 boards, if it becomes plenty. The value of gold and 

 • is in exact ratio to its scarcity and vice versa. 



The mind of man is but too prone to be on the 

 alert to speculate on human credulity and take an 

 unfair advantage of every monetary mania. King- 

 doms and nations have their rise and fall as well as 

 families and fortunes, commercial and agricultural 

 affairs ; it is one of the conditions entailed on the 

 affairs of this world, and from the long depression 

 of business affairs, we will not undertake to contro- 

 vert the opinion of your correspondent, that it requires 

 but a small dose of stimulus, to awaken a spirit of 

 speculation, in the dormant energies of, our excitable 

 population. Yet we are skeptical that it will be a 

 tornado that will annihilate all land-marks of pro- 

 priety. We do not believe that it will be any " great 

 shakes of a shower after all." 



S. W., who is your constant and generally reliable 

 correspondent, in your February number- twice uses 

 the word alluvial, as applied to the soil of the West- 

 ern country, not in a correct sense, scientifically 

 speaking. Alluvial, strictly, is the recent deposits 

 of rivers, lakes, and descending currents, and known 

 as " intervale," while the great mass of soil or drift 

 is a remote deposit, the result of the last great con- 

 vulsions that swept over the globe and anterior to 

 the existence of animal life, or the present order of 

 vegetation, and is denominated as diluvial. 



Pea Bugs, — We should like to know what advan- 

 tages A. H. promises himself, in keeping peas corked 

 up in a bottle for two years. The objection to sow- 

 ing buggy peas is not that they are thus distributed 

 in°the field, assisting future propagation, as their 

 number must be utterly insignificant — but that the 

 bug destroys the germ and it fails to vegetate. The 

 mischief is done by the insect in the larva? state, and 

 that process would go on, as well in the bottle, as in 

 the bag. 



Butter and Butter Making. — Mr. Emery's recom- 

 mendation of the use of the Lactometer, for testing 

 the value of milk, should commend itself to every 

 dairyman and farmer. When we consider that two 

 cows of equal fine proportions and giving equal 

 quantities of milk, one may be worth $30 and the 

 other only $15, relatively as to the quality of milk, 

 the importance of an instrument to immediately test 

 the fact, is of great consequence. 



In the. experiment stated in relation to the Kendall 

 and Atmosperic Churns, the first is made to produce 

 1\ ounces to the pound more butter than the latter, 

 with equal quantities of cream. If this is true and 

 was a fair experiment, the result must be fatal to 

 that invention and result in an immense loss to the 

 purchasers of that right, as it is said the patentee 

 has realized $100,000 from his sales. 



Wire Fences — Again* — Your talented correspon- 

 dent T. C. Peters, suggests another variety of this 

 new " Boston notion," and of a much cheaper con- 

 struction. We think the stakes intervening between 

 the posts, if not made of a more indestructible 

 material than any we are acquainted with, would 

 prove but a broken reed ; in short we mi£?t be per- 

 mitted to remain a doubter as to its applicability to 

 farm fences, except in the prairie country where 

 they have no other resource. Yet its expense would 

 not ruin one to try it. An ounce of trial is worth a 

 pound of speculation. 



Drill Husbandry.— We think favorably of die 

 process of drilling in wheat and all small grains : if 

 for nothing more than for the advantages of the deep 

 and perfect planting of the seed. In those fields 



