No. 5. 



Span-Level. — Grafting. — Milk. 



161 



labour to a vast extent, by providing the pro- 

 per tools for doing the wo.!; both well and 

 expeditiously. 



Foresight is another item in the economy 

 of agriculture. It consists in preparing work 

 for all weatlier, and doing all work in proper 

 weather, and at proper times. The climate 

 of the Uuited States makes the first easy, 

 and the second less difficult than in most 

 countries. Ruinous violations of this import- 

 ant rule are yet frequent, from temper and 

 impatience. Nothing is more common than 

 a persistence in ploughing, making hay, cut- 

 ting wheat, and other works, when a small 

 delay might have escaped a great loss, and 

 the labour employed to destroy, would have 

 been employed to save. Crops of all kinds 

 are often planted or sown at improper periods 

 or unseasonably, in relation to the state of 

 the weather, to their detriment or destruc- 

 tion, from the want of an arrangement of 

 the work on a farm, calculated for doing every 

 species of it precisely at the periods and in 

 the seasons most likely to enhance the profit. 



A third item in the economy of agriculture 

 is not to kill time by doing the same thing 

 twice over. However laboriously at work, 

 we are doing nothing during one of the ope- 

 rations, and frequently worse than nothing, 

 on account of the double detriment of tools, 

 teams and clothing. The losses to farmers 

 occasioned by this error, are prodigious under 

 every defective system of agriculture. Shifts 

 and contrivances innumerable are resorted to 

 for saving time, by bad and perishable work, 

 at an enormous loss of future time, until at 

 length the several fragments of time thus de- 

 stroyed, visibly appear spread over a farm, in 

 the form of ruined houses, fences, orchards and 

 Eoil ; demonstrating that every advantage of 

 Buch shifts is the parent of many disadvan- 

 tages, and that a habit of finishing every spe- 

 cies of work in the best mode, is the best 

 economy. — Arator^s Essays. 



Span-Level for Draining. 



It is necessary to relieve lands from super- 

 fluous moisture before they can be made pro- 

 ductive. Many soils are underlaid with a 

 retentive sub-soil, and these are of the kind 

 to be most benefited by the operation ; and 

 thorough draining will often quadruple the 

 product, and indeed it is calculated to render 

 lands, now productive only of noxious weeds, 

 the most fertile in the country. In open 

 drains it has been found by experience, that 

 to carry off the water effectually, a fall of 

 three inches in fifteen is necessary ; and to 

 guide in effecting this object, the common 

 Epan-level is in general use. The feet are 

 placed exactly fifteen feet apart, with one of 

 them three inches shorter than the other. 



The instrument is now placed upon a perfect 

 level, and the place where the bob-line falls 

 on the cross-piece is marked plainly. This 

 falls, of course, out of the centre, one leg 

 being shorter than the other. It is only then, 

 to set the shortest leg of the level in the di- 

 rection I wish the water to run, and lower it 

 until the line of the bob falls on the mark on 

 the cross-piece, and then I have, of course, a 

 fall of three inches in fifteen feet ; then, by 

 moving the long leg or foot of the level to 

 where the short one stood before, and by 

 making the bob play in its place, on the cross- 

 piece, the regular fall is contrived in the 

 shortest and easiest way imaginable. This 

 very simple and efficient instrument may be 

 placed in the hands of any man of the plain- 

 est understanding; and in forming water- 

 furrows across sown lands, preparatory to 

 the carrying off winter rains and snow-water, 

 it will be found a most valuable auxiliary. 

 Southern Planter. 



New Mode of Grafting. 



Mr. Downing, of Newburgh, has lately 

 practised with success, a new mode of graft- 

 ing, the object being, to test the quality of 

 fruits raised from seeds in a shorter period 

 than would be possible by permitting such 

 seedlings to stand until their natural time of 

 bearing. The method is, to put the top of a 

 shoot from a seedling tree, or a new variety, 

 when it is desirable to procure a specimen of 

 the fruit immediately, upon the top of a 

 thrifty shoot of a middling aged and fruit- 

 bearing tree: the process being simply to 

 take thrifty shoots, about a quarter of an inch 

 in diameter, and cut them in a slanting man- 

 ner clear through, so as to detach about four 

 inches of the top from the rest, making the 

 line of the angle about an inch — the stock 

 being cut in the same manner. The backs 

 are then to be carefully united, and bound up 

 with yarn, covering the whole with grafting 

 wax, to exclude the air. By this mode, fruit 

 may be obtained in a short period, so as to 

 test its value at an early day — the operation 

 being simple, with scarcely a fear of failure. 

 Hort. Mag. 



Scalding Milk. 



The Devonshire mode of managing milk, 

 whether intended for the churn or otherwise, 

 is, to scald it immediately as it is strained 

 from the cow. After this operation it does 

 not sour so soon even in summer ; and if it is 

 intended for butter-making, you have sweet 

 milk for family use, after the cream is taken 

 off. In winter, the cream that is taken from 

 scalded milk will not require more than fif- 

 teen minutes' churning to bring it into butter. 



