THE GENESEE FARMER. 



17 



NOTES FOE THE MONTH. -BY S. W. 



Michigan Mantjal Labor College, at Lan- 

 STjiG. — The first report of the Michigan Agricultur- 

 al Oollege is out in pamphlet. The inaugural ad- 

 dress by the President, Joseph R. Williams, who 

 needs not the prefix Hon. to his name, is a compre- 

 hensive and unusually terse, well written exposition 

 of the lack of literary training, and the intellectual 

 disabilities of the agricultural classes; in conse- 

 quence of which this, the greatest of our industrial 

 interests, is almost ignored by the national govern- 

 ment, while commerce and manufactures receive 

 millions for their encouragement and protection ? — 

 He says '* it is only a few weeks since the United 

 States Senate revised its committees and abolished 

 the committee on Agriculture, thus recognizing no 

 such national interest." But I would ask who can 

 blame the Senate for thus ignoring a class that so 

 tamely consents to its own political nonentity; who 

 is to blame if farmers wilUngly become the serfs of 

 the soil, satisfied that all they do not know, is not 

 worth knowing? May it not be said that (with 

 many noble exceptions,) the tiller of the soil is less 

 disposed to honor hus own calling by claiming for it 

 the necessity of science, than any other man who 

 lives by labor. Even the domestic cook — the maker 

 of savory stews — when clev-er, is a practical chem- 

 ist, and claims to be, as he is, an artist ; while the 

 farmer clings to hoary prejudices and hereditary re- 

 cipes, and in his meagre isolated egotism, ignores 

 his own great laboratory of nature's chemistry that 

 gives him his meat and his bread ? 



President Williams says " the chief end and object 

 of educating the tarmer is to teach him to subo'rdi 

 uate himself, and all animal and vegetable life 

 around hijn, to those inexorable laws, moral and 

 physical, the violation of which meets with swift 

 retribution." Again, " a farmer should be a chem- 

 ist so far as a comprehension of the principles which 

 aifeet his daily life and practice is concei-ned. He 

 need not be an analytic chemist, but he should be 

 familiar with those laws, the observance of which 

 is indispensable to safety and success, and the 

 defiance of Avhich is destruction." The agricul- 

 tural press should make long extracts from his 

 masterly address. The students are credited so 

 much per hour for their labor on the College exper- 

 imental farm. 



Distillery-fed Cow's Milk. — An M, D. of New 

 York city has lately published a report on the in- 

 creased mortality of the children of that city— lay- 

 ing the blame mainly to the use of the milk from 

 tlie distillery-fed cows. The learned Medico not 

 only pronounces the milk poisonous, but ho scan- 

 dalizes Analytic Chemistiy by tlie assertion that 

 " cliemistry can not detect the poison, hence it is 

 IX)werless to indicate an antidote." Now every 

 tyro in chemistry knows that distillery slop is boiled 

 meal with a little malt and yeast that have produced 

 a fermentation by which the starch and sugar of the 

 ineal_ was taken otf to form alcohol. If such slop 

 is poisonous, the antidote must be sugar, or vegeta- 

 bles containing starch and sugar, such as rations of 

 grass, cornstalks, sorghum in summer, and hay, stalks 

 &c., in winter. Slop-fed cows in this region thus 

 treated, give large messes of milk that affords rich 

 cream; and those city children who fed on such milk 

 here last summer, carried back an accession of bone 



and flesh and color. The M. D. would have dis^ 

 [)layed a better practical knowledge if, histead of 

 condemning distillery slops, he had descanted on 

 the abuse of the cows, shut up as they are in nar- 

 row, filthy, confined, unve-it-ilated stalls, where no 

 other animal but a quiet bovine could live a forti 

 night, to say nothing of their being fed almost en- 

 tirely on slop. How much better milk would a 

 cow give, if, under the same confinement, she was 

 fed on potatoes or Indian meal ? 



The Rural Annual and IIoRTicu'^.TriJAL Direc- 

 tory FOR 1858. — The title of the fir-t article in this 

 valuable work, "Manures for the Ort-''iard and Gar- 

 den," by no means indicates the extei.t of its teach- 

 ings, its pains-taking and truly practical dissertation 

 on the elements and relative value of manures, and 

 of the manner in which thjj should be applied both 

 to trees and plants, and how the niost wasting and 

 yet the most valuable ingredient in manure, nitro- 

 gen, should be saved, &c., &q. Those illusti'ations, 

 particularly of the trimmed dwarf pe-'r trees, vines, 

 &c., took the attention of a horticultural friend, 

 who, on subscribing for the book, pronounced the 

 article above referred to, to be worth twenty times 

 its cost. 



The advantage of Owning unsalable Village 

 Lots. — I read a letter from the West the other day 

 from a-no-longer-bachelor friend. lie went several 

 years ago to an incipient Illinois city, where the 

 speculative fever soon seized him; this subsided only 

 to find him more permanently seized, in fee simple. 

 Having enough of progressive city life, he wisely 

 married a smart girl of the country, a tai-racrs daugh- 

 ter, and bought a partially improved farm in North 

 Wisconsin. He now writes glowingly of the beau- 

 ties of alternate wild woods and prairie, of the pic- 

 turesque effect of deciduous trees relieved by the 

 passage of a sparkling stream, and groves of ever- 

 green pine ; his young wife is all he could ask in 

 loveliness ; in short he has but one trouble ; he 

 can't sell his city lots for money, and of course he 

 has no cash left to hire help to improve his match- 

 less domain, as he now feels it should be improved, 

 and he avers that he has little strength to work 

 much liimself. His mother now felt for liim, and 

 his sisters in their simplicity sympathised in his di- 

 lemma ; but a knowing elder brother who had him- 

 self lived ten years on a wild farm in north Hoos- 

 ierdoin, comforted them all by sayhig tliat " those 

 saleless lots, no matter if they were worthless, were 

 his great blessing, because if they could be turned 

 to cash the money would soon go, and what would 

 be worse, Joe would never learn the use of his 

 own hands to his dying day." He evidently spoke 

 as the French say en maiti-e, for he had heeti tJiere, 

 and he there got that physical education which he 

 now feels is beyond all price to his down hiU of life. 



Manure for Fruit Trees. — A writer in the ag- 

 ricultural columns of a New York paper says "trees 

 should be fed with specific manures; as the ashes 

 of the Pear tree contains twenty-seven parts phos- 

 phate of lime and twenty-two of potash, the tree 

 in its growing state nmst hunger for these particu- 

 lar elements, and feeding it with barn yard manure 

 will cause an unhealthy succulent luxuriance wholly 

 unfit to resist the attacks of cold." Just as if the 

 barn-yard manure did not contain these very ele- 

 ments. But the reverse of his theory has been 

 proved by repeated experiments— that the composi- 



