NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



those who take pleasure in mingling the beautiful 

 with the useful, and who wish to adorn their yards 

 and grounds, and give home new attractions, these 

 newly-imported rarities offer a fine chance. — Farm- 

 ers' Cabiiiet, Amherst, N. H. 



MECHANICAL IMPROVEMENT OF SOILS. 



There are two modes of improving soils. I have 

 spoken of the composition of soils. You see how 

 they vary, and what differences there are in the qual- 

 ities of soils, and what it is that constitutes equality 

 of soil, and what the relation between these and the 

 chemical composition of soils. But how are soils to 

 be improved ? There are two methods, the mechan- 

 ical and the chemical. Of the mechanical method I 

 shall now speak, and of the chemical in my last lec- 

 ture. Among the various mechanical methods of 

 improvement, there are three principal kinds. The 

 first is deep ploughing ; that, in almost all cases, is 

 found to be important and profitable. In all coun- 

 tries where I have been, in all parts of Europe which 

 I have visited, experience has shown that the soil 

 generally is not ploughed to a great depth : three, 

 four, or five inches, is almost the maximum depth of 

 exhaustion. It is very often the case, that persons 

 exhaust land, until they can raise no more crops, and 

 are then compelled to leave. The person who suc- 

 ceeds them, seeing the system of tillage that has 

 been practised, instead of adopting the former system 

 of shallow ploughing, goes down deeper, and turns 

 up a new soil altogether. Very likely in this new 

 soil arc found accumulated the materials which the 

 other soil once contained. The manure that has 

 been put on and accumulated below is turned uj), 

 and the new comer gets, perhaps, not only a good 

 virgin soil, but much of the money th^t the old 

 farmer has buried there. This is no hypothetical 

 case. If it were, I would not state it, for specula- 

 tion and hypothesis are good for nothing. In the 

 neighborhood of Edinburgh, there are farmers of the 

 greatest skill, and who make a great deal of money ; 

 and, as a general rule, you may judge of the skill of 

 a farmer by the number of sovereigns that he has 

 pocketed at the end of the year ; it is a very good 

 test. One of these farmers, after hearing one of my 

 lectures, in explanation of this simple principle, told 

 me, that, though he lived so near Edinburgh, the thing 

 had never occurred to him before, nor had he ever 

 heard of it ; and he immediately went to work to 

 carry out the principle, and, by ploughing down, he 

 had brought to the surface a fresh soil, and was then 

 growing luxuriant crops, where he had thought the 

 land entirely exhausted. Therefore, it is quite true, 

 that in the under, or subsoil, there accumulate many 

 substances which have drained through from, the 

 upper soil, which make it fully as rich as the upper 

 8oil once was, and that the farmer takes the cheapest 

 steps to reclaim poor land, exhausted by severe crop- 

 ping, who i)loughs deep. 



This must be sufficient to show the value of the 

 subsoil, when turned up and mixed with the upper. 

 I need not dwell on this ; but I have this remark to 

 make. It happens sometimes that various substances 

 accumulate beneath, which are injurious to the plant, 

 and in order that they may not injure the upper soil, 

 it is not always advisable to bring them up. There 

 are districts, in my country, where the subsoil is a 

 ■white clay, which is so barren, that if brought up, it 

 might destroy the upper soil, and therefore it is care- 

 fully avoided. This is the case in many parts of the 

 world. It is quite proper not to do so ; but not an 

 unfrequent resort with us, as a means of deepening 

 the soil, where the subsoil is impervious or noxious, 



is to cut it through, so that the water sinks, and as it 

 sinks below the level of the soil, the rain falls, filling 

 up aU. the pores in the soil to a certain point, which, 

 with the fresh air, effects a chemical action on thes« 

 substances, changes them chemically, and gives them 

 either a nourishing quality, or modifies the subsoil, 

 so that, when brought up, it will not be injurious, or 

 noxious to plants. 



This is the object of subsoil ploughing ; this is 

 common in England, after draining in stiff clay soils. 

 But the practice is also adopted where the land has 

 been long drained. In Scotland, the farmers plough 

 from seven to twenty inches deep, and experience 

 has shown that lands thus treated not only retain 

 every thing put on them in the form of manure, but 

 are capable of growing crops for a longer time, with- 

 out exhaustion, than if they did not plough so deep. 

 — Johnston s Lectures, 



THE FRUITFUL BEES. 



Messrs. Editors : I find in page 39, No. 1, vol. 

 ix., of the Prairie Farmer, an article headed "Fruit- 

 ful Bees." A Mr. Nelson Soule, in Yankee Settle- 

 ment, Iowa, should have been Steele. It is a fact, 

 that ten swarms sprung from one, in one season ; the 

 old swarm made eleven. That terrible long story 

 can be seen through with a small telescope by a good 

 mathematician or astronomer. It is this : the old 

 stock swarmed four times, one of them swarmed 

 three, another two, another one. According to my 

 arithmetic, four, three, two, and one, together with 

 the old stock, make eleven. He has had sixteen 

 swarm from six, this season. He makes his hive to 

 hold about a bushel, which is sufficient to hold eighty 

 pounds of honey. Hives of that size will throw out 

 a swai-m of from ten to fourteen quarts of bees, and 

 more swarms than larger hives. A good plan for a 

 hive : Take boards twelve and fourteen inches wide, 

 which will make it one foot square on the inside ; 

 two feet high, with a partition six and a half inches 

 from the top for boxes ; put in two in each hive ; 

 bore the hole in the partition, and bore so far as to 

 meet each other ; a box five inches square and eleven 

 long in the inside, will hold ten pounds of nice 

 honey. I have tried it, and you may. H«ve your 

 door in the back side of the hive ; then you can take 

 out a box at any time ; bore a hole in front of the 

 box so as to see when it is full, put a glass over it, 

 slide a piece of tin under the box, and draw it out 

 and replace with another, and the work is done with- 

 out destroying the bees. 



A LOVER OF GOOD HONEY. 



York, Delaware Co., Iowa. 

 — Prairie Farmer. 



The great palace of glass for the Great Industrial 

 Exhibition of 1851 is now being constructed. We 

 believe we have already given the dimensions of this 

 enormous structure, but the following brief summary 

 will be perused with interest : The building is de- 

 signed by Mr. Paxton. Its length is L848 feet, width 

 408 feet, height 66 feet. The transept is 108 feet 

 high ; except the timbers for floors and joists, it con- 

 sists entirely of glass and iron. There will be 3230 

 iron columns, 2244 iron girders, 1128 iron bearers, 

 and 358 iron roof-supporters ; 34 miles of gutters, 

 202 miles of sash bars, and 900,000 feet of glass. — 

 The gallery will be 24 feet wide. The site covers 18 

 acres. The exhibiting space is about 21 acres, which 

 can be greatly increased by additional galleries. The 

 contract with Messrs. Fox and Henderson is for 

 £79,800, or £150,000 if the building is permanently 

 retained. — Exchange. 



