THE GEITE6EE FARMER. 



269 



computation of what it had. cost hira, he found that 

 it amounted, with interest, to more than a mil- 

 lion of dollars. I cite this case to show how mis- 

 taken intelligent men have been as to the signs of 

 good land. 



" If any of yon have been in the county of Lewis, 

 passing north from Utica, you will see land which 

 is among the richest and most beautiful to be found 

 anywhere, dotted with farm houses, displaying 

 every evidence of prosperity and luxury on the 

 part of the owners. The Lewis county farmers 

 have some of the best farms in the State, and al- 

 ways carry off prizes at the State agricultural 

 fairs. As you travel along the course of the Black 

 river, you can stand on land which for many years 

 has sold at from $30 to $40 and $50 an acre, and 

 throw a stone across the river on to land that is 

 never worth over $5 per acre. Yet the latter was 

 first settled. The first settlers chose the east side 

 of the river because it was nearest to the market. 

 Those who settled on the west side did so because 

 they had no option. The men who bought land 

 on the east side lost their money ; those on the 

 other side were able to transmit large fortunes to 

 their posterity. If these men had known then 

 what any man can learn now by one day's atten- 

 tion to geology, they might have foreseea this re- 

 sult exactly. The Black river runs for 60 or 70 

 miles along a valley made' by the overlapping of 

 one stratum of rock over another. On the one 

 side it is an igneous rock which disintegrates into 

 sand— making a poor, aried soil. On the other 

 side of the Black river the subsoil is limestone — 

 which makes a warm, rich, productive soil. That 

 general knowledge of geology, which all men can 

 nr.w acquire without burdening themselves with 

 abtrusfc learning, or diverting themselves from 

 their business pursuits, would have saved the one 

 class of settlers from poverty and made them rich 

 men." 



THE PSOPEE DEPIH OF UNDEELKAINIKG. 



GovERXMEXT Horses.— A great many of the 

 horses lately disposed of by the Government as 

 "condeiiiu^ed," &c., were, and still are, subjects of 

 various torms of skin disease — mange, lousiness, 

 itc , and it is probable that wberi such anhnals are 

 introduced into decent "horse society," they will 

 be the means of spreading the itcli. mange, lousi- 

 ness, &c. Hence, I propose to give the readers of 

 ibis work some advice on the subject: 



h\ the first place, almost all the akin diseases 

 prevalent among army horses owe their origin to 

 leglec* and filth. Hence cleanliness— brush and 

 :.urry comb — are the best means of prevention, and 

 ire also valuable as curative agents. 



The best local application for diseases of the 

 ibove character, is as follows ; Linseed oil, tincture 

 )f lobelia, pyroligneous acid, spirits uf turpentine. 

 ;qual parts. Mix. 



Apply, by means of a sponge, a yiortion of the 

 ibove mixture to all parts of the I'ody; and the 

 )atient should have an occasional dos.,- of snlphnr 

 n a bran -mash. Four drachms of sulphur consti- 

 ute a dose. 



A HALF-BLOOD Aldcmey heifer belonging to Cyetts 

 Csir.nT, of East Hartford, Conn., gave birtli to a 

 alf when one year and twenty-four days old. 

 ilother and calf are as well as could be expected. 



Sanfoed Howard, Esq., of the Boston Cultivator, 

 who has spent much time among the best farmers 

 of England, alludes to a remark in the Londoa 

 Faj-mers' Magazine in regard to the "dogmatism 

 of drainage" among some English writers on thd 

 subject, and remarks that we, on this side of the 

 Atlantic, are not strangers to this same kind of 

 dogmatisra. It has been asserted here, as in Eng- 

 land, that a drain should always be at least four 

 feet deep. " The attention of these dogmatists," 

 says Mr. Howard, " has been called to the fact 

 that on certain lands in this country, drains of 

 two and a half to three feet deep have doubled the 

 crop of wheat, raising it from fifteen to thirty 

 bushels per acre, on the average, for several years ; 

 and in reference to this fact the question has been 

 asked whethef there was any evidence that in 

 these cases the benefit would have been greater 

 frim deeper drains, or whether the increased ben- 

 efit trom four-feet drains would have compensated 

 for the increased expense. No responses were 

 made to these questions, but the persons to whom 

 they were addressed go on with their dictation 

 without even alluding to the demonstrated benefits 

 of drains of less depth than their creed recog- 

 nizes. 



" Occasionally the attempt has been made to 

 show that four-feet drains are not really any more 

 expensive than those of two and a half feet, be- 

 cause, it was asserted, the spaces between the 

 drains could be doubled. The defenders of this 

 assumption were told that experience had clearly 

 proved that in stifi:" clay soils this rule was falla- 

 cious: that the deep drains would not sufficiently 

 draw the water through the wider spaces. This 

 fiict seems now to be generally admitted by British 

 teachers, though some of their American pupils 

 have not yet found it out." 



Mr. Ho^WAiKP cites several instances to prove 

 that the four-foot rule is not ap[>licable to all 

 cases. 



We do not know how it is about Boston, but in 

 this section farmers do not need to be cautioned 

 against putting their drains too deep. They nr;e 

 much more inclined to run to the opposite extreme. 

 Wf-havesoen many tiles laid not more than 20 

 inches deep, and of course ihe tarmtir ciitl not re- 

 ceive half the benefit he would if they had been 

 2i to 3 feet deep. 

 .John Johnston says: 



" If parcticable. drains should go so deep that 

 the water come? in at the sid^s, instead of nsiag 



