1868. 



NEW ENGLAND FAP^IER. 



267 



Lexington $100.50 per acre ; in Woodford County 

 200 acres at auction at $97.50 per acre. 



—The following are the officers of the Piscataqua 

 River Agricultural Association, recently elected : 

 Hon. James H. Butler, of Nottingham, President ; 

 Hon. Frank W. Miller, Haven L. Scott and Ed- 

 ward D. Coffin, Trustees; Nathan F. Mathes, 

 Treasurer, &c. ; Hiram Hayes, Secretary. 



— The latest style of swindling farmers, is to ap- 

 point individuals as agents for the sale of a com- 

 bined washing machina and wringer, with an al- 

 lowance of $6 on each machine sold, then induce 

 them to sign an order for $125 worth, which order, 

 being equivalent to a note, is sold and sued. 



— A correspondent of the Rural New Yorker, 

 who attended the inauguration of the Illinois In- 

 dustrial University, says there were about seventj' 

 students in attendance — bright-faced, wide-awake, 

 rough-and-tumble fellows, willing to work, and 

 evidently of the right kind of material for this ex- 

 periment, which educational hypochondriacs re- 

 gard so dubious. 



— There is a little town in Vermont where the 

 people have considerable fun with their "fence 

 viewers.'" One of the officers weighs 300 pounds, 

 another is six feet eight inches tall, and the third 

 is extremely small. It was recently voted that all 

 fences on which the fat man could sit, which the 

 tall couldn't straddle, nor the little one crawl 

 through, should be deemed legal fences. 



— The State auditor of Massachusetts reports 

 the amount of appropriations for agriculture for 

 1867, to be $34,042.39, viz. : 



Secretary's office $1,833 32 



Exponft-'S of members of Board 1,528 CO 



Cabinet 1,C00 00 



Cattle Commissioners 369 09 



Bounties to Societies 15,000 0) 



Printing 11,311 29 



Total $34,042 39 



— A correspondent of the Rural Neio Yorker, in 

 Victor, Iowa, has been in the sheep business for 

 eight years, and after trying all the various com- 

 pounds warranted to cure the foot rot, has come 

 to the conclusion that though it may be alleviated, 

 it is practically incurable. One of his neighbors 

 began the winter, one year ago, with 125 sheep, 

 and in the spring had 124 pelts and one live sheep ! 

 Farmers in that section are so discouraged with 

 the sheep business that they neglect their flocks. 



—As illustrative of the Western style of farm- 

 ing, the following advertisement, copied from the 

 Chicago daily papers, may be interesting to those 

 who regard farming as a small business :— " Wanted 

 — Contractors to break 4000 acres prairie, near 

 Cnatsworth, Ford county. Price $3 per acre. 

 Houses, and lumber for stables furnished; no 

 other extras. Address M. L. Sullivant, Chats- 

 worth, Livingston County, 111. It should be re- 

 membered that, when broken, this little patch will 

 be hardly one-tenth of Mr. S.'s farm. 



EXTRACTS AND KEPLIES. 



ASHES FOR WHEAT GllOUND. — LIME FOR 

 SHINGLES. 



Will it be an object for me to put lime with my 

 ashes for my wheat ground, that was manured last 

 fall with barn cellar manure ? Some say it will 

 help the kernel very much. I intend to apply the 

 ashes after ploughing this spring. If so, how much 

 lime per aci'e ? 



As I am about to build a new barn, had I better 

 dip my shingles in lime water ? If salt should be 

 added, how much is required ? 1 saw a recommen- 

 dation of this kind some time ago in your paper. 

 Perhaps you can refer me to the paper. Some are 

 dipping in tar. It will be much woi k to dip forty 

 thousand. Rockingham. 



Straiham, N. H., March 26, 1868. 



Remarks. — Prof. Holmes says that it is believed 

 by some that lime as an application to the soil, acts 

 in two ways — one as a sthnulant that \)romotcs veg- 

 etation by causing the soil with which it is mixed 

 to exert itself; and the other, in promoting the 

 growth of trees and plants by enriching the land 

 as manure, and adding to the quantity of vegetable 

 food. By others it is looked upon in a chemical 

 and medicinal point ot view ; acting as an altera- 

 tive, a coiTCctor, a dissolvei, as a decomposer, a 

 disengagcr of certain parts of the animal, vegeta- 

 ble and mineral substances contained in the soil, 

 and as a reta ner and a combiner with others ; but 

 not as a substance, like dung or decayed organic 

 matter, fit for the immediate nourishment of plants. 



Nitric acid operates on silver, and not on the 

 compounds of counterfeit coins. So perhaps it 

 may be with lime when applied to ditferent soils. 

 In England and in the Southern States lime is 

 much more popular with farmers, than in New 

 England. But even in England, they have a pro- 

 verb that while lime enriches the fathers it im- 

 poverishes the sons. There is also a great differ- 

 ence in the chemical constituents of lime. A writer 

 for the Germantown Telegraph says when lime is 

 prepared for agi-icultural purposes it should be 

 used immediately. If long exposed to rain and 

 dews before being spread it loses much of its power 

 to act on the ingredients of the soil. The same 

 ^\Titcr says, from thirty to sixty bushels per acre 

 should be applied once in six years. Will not oar 

 correspondent try lime on parts of his field, by ap- 

 plying it to strips through the wheat, alternated with 

 those without lime. 



A few years since Mr. Ed. Emerson, of HoUis, 

 Mass., communicated to our columns his plan for 

 making shingles last. He sometimes soaked the 

 shingles in "thin white wash, made with brjne in- 

 stead of clear water," at others he laid his shin- 

 gles in white wash. "I line with red chalk. 

 Then white wash the last course laid, down to the 

 line, and after the building is shingled I white 

 wash the whole roof." He stated that he thought 

 it would make the shingles last twice as long. Ho 

 spoke of a roof covered with sappy and shaky 

 shingles twenty years previously, and thought 

 they would last seven years longer. He puts nails 

 not over two inches apart, and does not drive them 



