224 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



TREATMENT OF HAY. 



Ilay, in England, is scarcely ever put in barns. It 

 keeps" well in stacks, made up as they are in the 

 neatest manner, and carefully thatched with straw. 

 Xothin"- can be more beautiful and workmanlike than 

 the m;uincr in which these arc made up ; and for hay, 

 the lonjj; stacks are decidedly preferable to those of a 

 round Ibrm, as it is cut down for use, in such case, 

 with more advantage. The formation of a stack, 

 M-liich is often done by women, is a work of much 

 skill, which is the fruit only of practice ; the thatch- 

 ing of a stack in the best manner requires both art 

 and experience, and there are men Avho make it a 

 profession. "When well executed, the hay for years 

 is impervious to wet. During the formation of the 

 stack, — which, when intended to be large, must 

 sometimes wait for several days the progress of the 

 haymaking, — the most careful farmers have a large 

 tarpaulin or canvas covering, to suspend upon poles 

 over the stack, in order to protect it from the rain. 

 I refer to these mmute circumstances, to illustrate 

 the extreme carefulness with which m.any of the op- 

 erations of husbandry are here conducted. When 

 the hay is to be used, a whole stack is never removed 

 to the stables at once, but is carefully cut down as a 

 loaf of bread might be cut, and alwaj's done up and 

 bound in trusses, intended to be of fifty-six pounds 

 each, and in that way carried to be distributed to the 

 animals. This requires some extra labor ; but the 

 farmers find their account in it. IIow different this 

 is from the careless and wasteful manner in which 

 things are managed with us, -where I have often seen 

 horses and oxen standing knee deep in the litter of 

 the very best hay, which has fallen and been tossed 

 out of the mangers ! The consequence of this extra- 

 ordinary painstaking is the most economical manage- 

 ment of their products. The animals have a regular 

 allowance, and are not at one time surfeited, and at 

 another time star^'ed ; and not a handful of hay is 

 ■wasted. I have never been quite able to understand 

 the old proverb, that " a penny saved is twopence 

 earned ; " but I quite understand the folly of wast- 

 ing that which is the product of severe toil and ex- 

 pense, and the immorality of throwing away that 

 which the bounty of Heaven bestowed for the com- 

 fort and sustenance of man or beast. I once heard a 

 minister say, in his sermon, that some persons were 

 charitable in spots. I think, in a similar sense, it 

 may be said that some persons are economical in 

 spots ; and that many persons who will chaffer and 

 higgle half a day, to save a sixpence in the price of 

 an article, will often throw away shillings in their 

 neglectful or wasteful use of it. — Colmans European 

 Agriculture. 



ADVANTAGES OF FORESTS. 



The Honorable G. P. Marsh, in his address before 

 the Rutland County Agricultural Society, makes the 

 following excellent observations in regard to the ad- 

 vantages of forests : — 



"The functions of the forest, besides supplying 

 timber and fuel, are very various. The conducting 

 powers of trees render them highly useful in restor- 

 ing the disturbed equilibrium of the electric fluid ; 

 they are of great value in sheltering and protecting 

 more tender vegetables against the destructive effects 

 of bleak and parching winds, and the annual deposit 

 of the foliage of deciduous trees, and the dccomijosi- 

 tion of thcLr decaying trunks, form an accumulation 

 of vegetable mould, which gives the gi^atest fertility 

 to the often originally barren soils on which they 

 grow, and enriches the lower grounds by the wash 

 from rains and melting snows. 



"The inconveniences resulting from a want of fore- 



sight in the economy of the forest, are already se- 

 verely felt in many parts of New England, and even 

 in some of the older towns in Vermont. Steep side 

 hills and rocky ledges are well suited to the perma- 

 nent growth of wood ; but when, in the rage for im- 

 provement, they are improvidently stripped of this 

 protection, the action of sun, and wind, and rain 

 soon deprives them of their thin coating of vegetable 

 mould ; and this, when exhausted, cannot be restored 

 by ordinary husbandry. They remain, therefore, 

 barren and unsightly blots, producing neither grain 

 nor grass, and yielding no crop but a harvest of nox- 

 ious weeds, to infest with their scattered seeds the 

 richer arable grounds below. Eut this is by no means 

 the only evil rcsultmg from the injudicious destruc- 

 tion of the woods. Forests serve as reservoirs and 

 equalizers of humidity. In wet seasons, the decayed 

 leaves and spongy soil of wood lands retain a large 

 proportion of the falling rains, and give back the 

 moisture, in time of drought, by evaporation, or 

 through the medium of springs. They thus both 

 check the sudden How of water from the surface 

 into the streams and low grounds, and prevent the 

 droughts of summer from parching our pastures, and 

 drying ujj the rivulets which water them. On the 

 other hand, whore too large a proportion of the sur- 

 face is bared of wood, the action of the summer sun 

 and wind scorches the hills which are no longer 

 shaded or sheltered by trees, the springs and rivulets 

 that found their supply in the bibulous soil of the 

 forest disappear, and the farmer is obliged to surren- 

 der his meadows to his cattle, -which can no longer 

 find food in his pastures, and sometimes even to drive 

 thorn miles for water. Again, the vernal and au- 

 tumnal rains, and the melting of snows of winter, 

 no longer intercepted and absorbed by the leaves or 

 the open soil of the Avoods, but faULng every where 

 upon a comparatively hard and even surface, flow 

 swiftly over the smooth ground, washing away the 

 vegetable mould as they seek their natural outlets, 

 fill every ravine Avith a torrent, and convert every 

 river i^to an ocean. The suddenness and -sdolence 

 of our freshets increase in proportion as the soil is 

 cleared ; bridges are washed awaj-, meadows swept 

 of their crops and fences, and covered with barren 

 sand, or themselves abraded by the fury of the cur- 

 rent ; and there is reason to fear that the valleys of 

 many of our streams will soon be converted from 

 smiling meadows into broad masses of shingle, and 

 gravel, and pebbles — deserts in summer, and seas in 

 autumn and spring." 



HOW TO DESTROY MOLES. 



Mil. Bateham : I see several articles in the Cul- 

 tivator respecting moles, and the most easy way 

 to destroy these posts of the garden and cornfield. 

 Several years ago, I cleared my ground of them al- 

 most entirely, by the use of the castor oil bean. My 

 practice was to take a handful of the beans in my 

 pocket, and wherever I found one of their roads, I 

 just thrust my forefinger through the crust, drojij^ed 

 in from six to ten beans, and covered up the orifice. 

 The next time the mole comes along, he cats the 

 bean, and is thus destroyed. "NVc think this a much 

 safer and easier method than any we have seen, as 

 most poisons lose their strength in a very short time, 

 when put in the ground. A single plant in a garden, 

 well cultivated, would produce beans enough to poi- 

 son moles for a number of 5'ears. It grows easy, and 

 is a iine-looking plant, I have always succeeded in 

 raising as many as I wanted. 



Yours, &c., 



SAJSIUEL BLACK. 

 — Ohio Cultivator. 



