180 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



&c., without any extra dressing of manure, and still 

 with an increasing product from year to year. It is 

 believed that all lands are benefited by subsoiling. 

 I have not tried it much on light, sandy soils, but 

 there are some of our very best fanners in the state, 

 ■who have tested it on this kind of soils, that believe 

 it to be of equal benefit on these, as on hard soils. 

 It is hoped that many of the farmers of the county 

 and state will try these ploughs the coming season, 

 and note the result. Ploughs are kept at Manches- 

 ter, Concord, and Nashua, the prices varying from 

 eight to sixteen dollars ; and -we venture to predict 

 that any farmer paying ten or twelve dollars for one, 

 will never feel that liis money was paid for a useless 

 implement. B. SHATTUCK. 



Bedford, 1850. 

 — Granite Farmer. 



N. H. STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



We acknowledge ourself deeply interested in the 

 progress and welfare of this infant institution. AVe 

 feel that on its successful operation, its early, rapid, 

 and strong progress, depend great interests to our 

 hard-soiled and rock-ribbed state. The objects of the 

 society are to promote agricultural and mechanical 

 interests ; — to assist in the general diffusion of more 

 enlarged and scientific views on these subjects ; — to 

 bring the practical working men of the state together 

 from time to time, that they may compare notes and 

 strength, acquire individual zeal by associated labor 

 and emulation ; and to rally around a home centre 

 that interest that has in time passed looked abroad for 

 its objects of desire and care. There is, we are aware, 

 upon this subject a mistaken sentiment, that has in 

 times past, and that may now, to a certain extent, 

 prevent many from coming up with cordial and hearty 

 effort to the aid of our new society. It is this. We 

 hear it occasionally suggested that it may do for New 

 York to support liberally a State Society — her soil is 

 rich, easily tilled, and consequently such a course will 

 pay. Massachusetts may clo this to advantage, as 

 she has more wealth to expend in agricultural inves- 

 tigations, greater facilities for advanced cultivation, 

 and more inducements in the shape of a market de- 

 mand. AN'ith the exception perhaps of tins last 

 advanta<;c, are not the very reasons assigned as ob- 

 jections to hearty labor for, and support of, a State 

 Society, the venj reasons why the most earnest labor of 

 every individual should be freely iind uns^jaringly 

 given for the sxipport of such a society ? Are they 

 not the most urgent reasons why the new State So- 

 ciety should receive unmixed sympathy and most 

 cordial support ? 



Is New Hampshire soil hard to cultivate, and does 

 it yield its returns from force and grudgingly ? Who 

 then more than the New Hampshire farmer needs to 

 call to his aid all the resources of science, that he may 

 compel the more easily the unwilling earth ? Who 

 needs more than he the benefits of associated effort ? 

 For one individual to attempt for himself alone a 

 tithe of all the chemical and obsei-vational experi- 

 ments needed upon the varieties of our soils, would 

 consume a lifetime in unrequited toil. And if, as it 

 has been in times past, no one of these experiments 

 should be put on record, at the end of tliis lifetime 

 the farming community would be no wiser than be- 

 fore. Each one would be obliged to go over the same 

 ground for himself, and that as though no other had 

 ever tried that path before him. 



Association puts the acquisition of a whole body 

 of experimentalists into the possession of each indi- 

 vidual ; a member of an elKcicnt association becomes 

 gil'tod with the hundred eyes of the fabled Argus, 

 with which to pry into the secrets of nature, the hun- 

 dred hands of Briarius, with which to work in a 



hundred fields of labor. That New Hampshire soil 

 is poor and hard, then, is the best reason why the New 

 Hampshire farmer should strive for better modes of 

 culture. Science has locked up in her depositories 

 all the secrets of our hard soil, and the farmer has 

 but to ask of her, and she wiU instruct him how to 

 make the difficult easy. If our farms arc the " strong 

 man armed," science is the " stronger than the strong 

 man armed." 



That New Hampshire has not the wealth that other 

 states may have, furnishes another reason why her 

 farmers should combine their energies to bring wealth 

 to their state by a better and more scientific mode of 

 culture. What farmer is there, in our state, that 

 could not by more care, a more intelligent labor^ and 

 a more judicious application of means to an end, se- 

 cure the same croj) from half the number of acres ho 

 now cultivates ? In the language of the " Old Man 

 of the Mountain," " Where's the use of mowing, 

 tugging, and sweatin" over 30 to 40 acres of land to 

 get 20 tons of scorched wiry redtop or speargrass, 

 and this too filled with sorrel, whiteweed, and black- 

 berry vines, wl\en by proper culture, and as cheaply, 

 in the long run, he can get the same quantitj* of well, 

 made herdsgrass from 6 or 8 acres." If the intimation 

 conveyed in this query of the venerable " dweUer 

 among the rocks " is true, that twenty tons of hay 

 now grown on from thirty to forty acres, might be 

 made to grow on from six to eight, to say nothing of 

 improved quality, it is nothing beyond the limits of a 

 reasonable sujjposition that on the same or even less 

 amount of land the grass crop of the state might be 

 doubled in a very short time, by a more intelligent 

 adaptation of means and agencies. Supjjose this done. 

 The amount of hay raised in New Hampshire is put 

 down in the last Patent Report, (not the one pre- 

 sented to the present Congress,) as 680,000 tons. Let 

 this crop be doubled, and at fair average of the prices 

 of hay throughout the state, the productive wealth 

 of the state Avould be increased more than six mil- 

 lions of dollars. Tliis is but one of many products of 

 the soil that go to make up the agricultural wealth 

 of the state. It is, then, one of the plainest dictates 

 of common sense, that time, labor, and money, in- 

 vested in the ways and means of increased knowledge 

 of the natures of soils and crops, and the relations be- 

 tween them, — in increased facilities and in better 

 constructed implements of culture, — in any thing that 

 shall give the farmer more entire control over the 

 natural elements, is time, labor, and money, most 

 wisely given. 



The New Hampshire State Agricultural Society 

 affords to the farmers of the state just the field in 

 which to labor for the increase of its wealth. This 

 increase, too, is not only general, but individual. The 

 state is richer because, and only because, the indi- 

 viduals composing it are so. 



We intend recurring to this matter again, and 

 would close by urging upon our citizens, generally, 

 attention to the claims of this society. " Union is 

 strength," and in the increased strength and pros- 

 perity of one interest, and especially one so vital, all 

 arc made stronger. — Granite Farmer. 



MANAGEMENT OF SWINE. 



Messiis. Editors : I give you my experience in 

 the management of swine. In the first place, I take 

 December pigs, let them run with the sows two 

 months, then wean them, and enclose them in a pen, 

 in which they arc moderately fed on corn, with as 

 much milk from the dairy, or good swill of some 

 kind, as will keep up a thriftiness. As soon as clover 

 is in blossom, I leave oft' grain feeding, and givo 

 clover three times per day until after harvest. I then 

 turn them on to stubble. They remain there imtil 



