1868. 



NEW ENGLAND FAKMER. 



171 



term it, is not so valuable to produce crops, 

 as that not "fire-fangled." Every person of 

 common sense, well knows that to cut the grass 

 year after year, from a given piece of land 

 without returning to the land any fertilizer, 

 impoverishes the soil, and it becomes barren 

 and ceases to yield a crop of anything. 



It is not simply mineral that the impoverished 

 land needs. It wants that which has been taken 

 from it. It wants grass, leaves, barn-yard 

 manures, and compost. The smaller your ma- 

 nure heap, the smaller barn and cellar you 

 will need to store your products. Like begets 

 like ; minerals are minerals, and vegetables 

 are vegetables. Vegetables of all kinds con- 

 tain but a very small per cent, of mineral 

 matter. A cucumber contains 97 parts of wa- 

 ter in 100. Beans contain only 14 parts of 

 water, and 86 parts are dry matter, of which 

 38 parts are carbon. 



Hayward's theory would be to burn one ton 

 of hay or manure to ashes, and then spread 

 that on the land to grow the crop. Is that 

 either scientific or natural ? The ground wants 

 heat and warmth, — stimulus, carbon and am- 

 monia ; and to secure these you must have your 

 ground finely broken up and light, so that the 

 air can more or less circulate through it. Hay, 

 orts or straw (that have been well saturated 

 with urine) placed a few inches below the sur- 

 face and covered with dirt, generate heat by 

 fermentation, and fill the soil with ammonia, 

 and afford plant food. I contend that manure 

 is wasted by drying. How ? The ammonia 

 and other principles are lost in the air. When 

 covered with soil these principles are retained, 

 and impart vitality to the growing plant. 



The assumption that mineral matter is all 

 that is needed to grow a crop, is a fallacy. 

 What is the ground itself but minerals ? 



I once planted the ordinary garden vegeta- 

 bles on a soil to which no manure, except a 

 sprinkling of ashes, had been applied for years. 

 It had been, as farmers say, well "skinned." 

 My «rops were sad failures throughout. Hav- 

 ing faith in manures, rather than in minerals, I 

 took a quantity of my garden soil and formed 

 a basin under the privy, into which the vines 

 and weeds from the garden and yards, with 

 ashes and every other vegetable matter within 

 my reach, were put, together with one peck of 

 lime. In the spring I added another half cord 

 of the soil, and the whole was forked over 

 and well mixed. A few days after the ground 

 had been spaded, this heap of compost was 

 spread on and raked in. Apparently, every 

 seed I planted germinated, and I had sweet 

 corn, beans, cucumbers, marrow fat squashes, 

 carrots, turnips, peppers, beets, onions, mus- 

 tard, lettuce, peppergrass, summer squashes, 

 and other vegetables, all of good size and ex- 

 cellent quality, and in striking contrast with 

 their starved and Liliputian predecessors of 

 the previous season. The second year I re- 

 peated this operation, omitting the lime, and 

 raised about fifteen hundred pounds of ripe 



and green vegetables, on fifty feet square of a 

 small garden ; two crops having been grown 

 on a part. The first year my crop of potatoes 

 was not more than half as heavy as the seed 

 planted, but this year I had Jackson Whites 

 as good as ever were set before a president. 

 My potatoes were raised in a bed as follows : 

 Having forty or fifty pounds of salt hay — I 

 presume any other would have been as good — 

 1 put it into a bed, some fifteen feet square, 

 from which the soil, to the depth of six inches, 

 had been thrown out on the sides after the 

 ground had been prepared for planting ; the 

 subsoil also having been spaded up light. The 

 soil was then thrown back upon the hay, sufli- 

 ciently to cover it, and the potatoes were 

 dropped in line or drills, about eight inches 

 apart, and covered up with soil, but so as to 

 leave the potato bed a little lower than the 

 surrounding land. I kept the weeds out by 

 pulling them up while small, as the vines were 

 too near together to admit of the hoe, though 

 the ground was occasionally loosened with a 

 very small rake. They were several times 

 sprinkled with soap suds. The result was a 

 jield of about three bushels of beautiful po- 

 tatoes. Dr. Boynton. 

 Laiorence, Mass., Jan., 1868. 



THE 



'JAMESTOWN" 

 CATTLE. 



BREED OP 



The Norfolk County, Mass., agricultural 

 Society, awarded the "Wilder Cup," the first 

 premium on herds of milch cows, to Mr. J. 

 W. Gay, of West Dedham, who entered his 

 herd of fifteen cows, eleven of which were 

 raised in Dedham, and were entered as "pure 

 or high grade Jamestowns," a part of which 

 were dry, and others nearly so, the herd giv- 

 ing from two to eighteen quarts each per day. 



As to the origin of the Jamestown Breed, 

 the chairman of the committee, A. W. Chee- 

 ver, Esq., furnishes a statement, by Colonel 

 Stone, of Dedham, from which we condense 

 the following : — 



"In 1847, Capt. R. B. Forbes, as com- 

 mander of the U. S. ship Jamestown, wei^t to 

 Ireland with a cargo of provisions for her 

 starving inhabitants. On his return, the Lord 

 Lieutenant of Ireland, wishing to confer some 

 favor on the commander, made him a present 

 of a fine Suffolk heifer, which proved to be 

 one of the deepest milkers, giving in her flow, 

 twenty-six quarts beer measure of the richest 

 milk. She was a remarkably fine specimen of 

 this superior stock, which stands high and 

 prominent for the dairy in that country. 



On his return, he disposed of the cow and 

 gave the proceeds to the Irish Charity Fund. 

 John Marland, of Andover, Mass., was the 

 purchaser, and when he disposed of his farm 

 she passed into the hands of John D. Bates, 



