THE GENESEE FAR^fER. 



237 



Quakers, and though their farms are small, you 

 could probably learn more from them than from 

 many larger farmers." True, most true! Large 

 farmers are not always the best farmers, and the 

 man who raises 10 acres of Avheat frequently 

 knows quite as much about wheat culture as tlie 

 man who raises 100 acres. 



"It is getting late, but," said Mr. McV., "we 

 must stop and see Mr. I). Cox. He is one of the 

 best farmers in the neighborhood." 



Mr. 0. has what the poet Shelley sighed for—" a 

 small house and a large garden." He does not 

 raise as much wheat as formerly, but in answer to 

 a question expressed the opinion that the land was 

 richer to-day than ever before. He has one field of 

 60 acres, handsome rolling upland, that be has suf- 

 fered to lie in grass since 1854. It is an experi- 

 ment to see if the pasture will improve. On the 

 bottom land it is generally conceded that the older 

 the meadows the better grass they produce — per- 

 haps not more of it, but of better quality. 



Mr. Cox's rotatioc is as follows: Pasture two 

 years • draw out manure on the grass in the fall 

 and spread it; plow it under, with the grass, the 

 next spring, and plant corn or beans, or sow peas 

 or barley. In the fall sow again to wheat, and 

 seed with clover in the spring. 



" How much clover seed per acre?" 

 " We seldom sow enough — 12 pounds is cer- 

 tainly none too much." 



Mr, MoVean had previously expressed the same 

 opmion — that we did not sow seed enough. He is 

 also very much in favor of the late or large kind 

 of clover. But he does not like timothy on the 

 uplands. "It is coming to be a common opinion," 

 he said, " that it is foolish to s^w timothy on up- 

 lands, because it is a cereal and exhausts the land 

 as much as a crop of wheat." 



"I heard one of our farmers say, the other day," 

 we remarked, " that he preferred to pTow in a crop 

 of timothy to a crop of clover. He thinks he gets 

 better wheat. His land is a heavy, cold clay." 



" It may be so on such land, but i-^ not so with 

 us. The land turns up dead, and i.s not friable as 

 it is after clover." 

 "We asked Mr. Cox his opinion on the subject. 

 "I would not sow timothy on my uplands on any 

 account. It grows very well, but hardens the 

 ground. On heavy timbered land it has not this 

 jffect. But I do not like it. I have seen the bad 

 iffect of it on upland for many years." 



We catch a view of Mr. Thomas Brown's fine 

 awd of cattle on his 400-acre farm, on the flats — 



but it is getting late and the Iron Horse won't 

 wait for us. 



We bid our kind friend "good bye" at the depot, 

 and are soon at home— but all night visions of i^ag- 

 nificent wheat fields, herds of cattle grazing on 

 fat pastures, float before us. 



"THE TKTJE CAUSE OF THE POTATO BLIGHT DE- 

 TERMINED EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO." 



John Townlet, Esq., of Moundville, Wis., under 

 the above head, favors us with the following in- 

 teresting remarks. He says: 



" In the article in the May number of the Gene- 

 see Farmer on the potato disease, it is said : ' To 

 prove that this fungus invariably precedes, and is 

 immediately followed by, the blight, is the capital 

 achievement lately made by three German botan- 

 ists.' It is perfectly right that these eleventh hour 

 laborers should have their reward. Further testi- 

 mony was needed to convince people generally, as 

 well as many scientific men and agricultural editors, 

 that a fungus is the immediate or exciting cause of 

 the disease ; but this was as clearly proved by the 

 Rev. M. J. Berkeley, of England, and Professor 

 Moreen, of Belgium, in 1845, as it is now in 1863. 

 On the breaking out of the dieease in England, a 

 commi.'ssion was appointed by the Government to 

 investigate the cause, and suggest a remedy. The 

 commissioners appeared to me to have got on the 

 wrong track at the outset, and seemed bent on pur- 

 suing it. Believing that their explanation was not 

 adequate to account for the disease, and that their 

 remedial measures alone could not possibly prove 

 efficient, and believing, further, that a more truth- 

 ful view of the whole case had occurred to me, I 

 was induced to publish a few letters on the snbject 

 in 1845 and 1846, and a pamphlet in the spring of 

 1847. A copy of this I herewith send you. 



The ComTuissioners, you will find by referring to 

 page 18, raised objections to the fungal theory and 

 endeavored to prove that, by the action of cold 

 and wet, portions of the potato plant died and de- 

 cayed, thus was prepared a field on which the 

 mouldiness could establish itself. ' If funo'i were 

 the cause of disease,' said they, ' it was difficult to 

 conceive why fields of potatoes placed very near 

 each other should be differently affected, or why 

 certain varieties of the plant were niucli less in- 

 jured than others.' They were also unable to re- 

 concile with the theory of the* disease being caused 

 by fungi, the remarkable fact that, in its present 

 shape, it is certainly of modern origin. To show 

 the weakness of these objectioos, and the impor- 



