THE GENESEE FARMER. 



113 



NOTES FOE THE MONTH, -BY 8. W. 



Prize Essays. — Taken together, the prize essays 

 in the last Farmer embody in a condensed form the 

 results of much valuable rural experience. Those 

 articles on making, saving, and applying manures ; 

 the best rotation of crops on a clay farm ; ditto on 

 a sandy farm ; and the two brief essays from G. C, 

 L., on feeding, and the right use of muck in yards 

 and stables ; can not fail to impress every man who 

 lives by stock growing and tillage : and to the mar- 

 ket gardener, those detailed directions for the culti- 

 tivation of tomatoes, by J. C. Taylor, of Holmdel, 

 H . J., are worth many years' subscription to the 

 Genesee Fartner. But the other contributions are 

 alike interesting, and worthy of the prizes awarded. 



Superphosphate of Lime. — That practical essay 

 from L,, of Chester county, Pa., on Superphosphate 

 of Lime as a Manure, needs more than a passing 

 notice, because he gives the results of his repeated 

 experiments, not only in the apphcation, but in the 

 making of superphosphate from bones and sulphuric 

 acid, by his own manipulations at home ; and the 

 superior quality of his own article in its eifects on 

 vegetation, as compared with that he bought from 

 the dealers, is noteworthy. Yet L.'s experiments 

 go to prove that the organic matter in the bones, 

 for various crops, is of more manurial value than 

 the mineral phosphate. But he speaks of his pains- 

 taking experiments with the modesty of true genius ; 

 and I hope he will continue to give to the Farmer 

 the results of more of his experiments in manuring 

 and culture. 



How TO make the most Manure to the Animal 

 Kept. — O. Judd, of the Agriculturist, makes fifteen 

 oords or thirty loads of manure for each horse or 

 bovine, and five cords for each pig, at his little farm 

 on Long Island, He keeps dry swamp muck in a 

 slied adjoining his stable, a coating of which six or 

 eight inches thick is spread in the stalls and kept 

 there until thoroughly saturated with urine ; then 

 it is thrown into the stable cellar, and a like coat- 

 ing of fresh dry muck is put in its place. This 

 muck is daily covered Avith a little straw or refuse 

 marsh hay, which, with the solid fceces, is removed 

 eech morning, and more dry litter is put in its place. 

 The mucky mass heats a little in the cellar, but not 

 enough to hurt its ammonia. Late in the fall, the 

 manure is hauled from the cellar to the field, and 

 heaped up with about twice its bulk from the pile 

 at the bog. These heaps are forked over in the 

 winter, and in the spring they are spread and plow- 

 ed in. Although this manure is made and saved at 

 the expense of much labor, it is mostly done in cold 

 weather, when Irish and German help is plenty, 

 and needs nothing but the master's eye to make it 

 cheap and effectual. How much better and more 

 economical it is than the skinning process, which is 

 working hard with slender hopes of present reward, 

 and the certainty of being starved out in the end. 

 The Sovereign People of the United States. 

 —The late monetary revulsion in this country is a 

 puzzle to the political economists of England ; even 

 the astute editor of the London Times is at a loss 

 to account for such a consummation, " in a country 

 overflowing with a bountiful harvest." Little do 

 Europeans know of our social position and civilized 

 necessities, if they think that full bellies of bread, 

 and cheese, and beer, or sour grapes, will suflSce us 

 as it does the great working classes of old Europe. 



In England, the man who holds the plow has no 

 material want beyond bread and beer, and a thatched 

 hovel and summut for his Missus and childerf — 

 While the holders of our plows and their families, 

 have even more than a lessee English farmer's wants ; 

 for they want painted houses well furnished, and 

 their daughters want the latest Parisian fashions. 

 Then money must be had to send west to pay on 

 contracts for new land, bought dear in times of paper 

 money inflation, and now to be paid for when 

 money is not, and crops bring little compared with 

 the prices of former years! 



A Sleigh Ride along the Eastern Shore of 

 Cayuga Lake — David Thomas — Union Springs — 

 Aurora. — Great has been the improvements within 

 two years, not only in fences and buildings, but in 

 general farm management, along this beautiful lake 

 region. Union Springs, from a little drab-colored 

 hamlet, with a spring mill nestling among tall gir- 

 dled oaks by this matchless lake side, as I once saw 

 it, is now a large and wealthy village, with many 

 houses of costly Elizabethan architecture, fine gar- 

 dens, shade trees, shrubbery, and J. J. Thomas' 

 nurseries in progress. Here I called to see my 

 greatly esteemed and ancient friend, D. TnoMASf 

 once a pioneer of this county, a moral shining light, 

 an ornament to true Quakerism, and an amatenr 

 and a master in the vegetable and floral kingdom. 

 But now, stricken by a mortal disease in his 82d 

 year, his memory is gone, and he is at this time only 

 the confused and disjointed intellectual debris of 

 what he was. Yet a kind providence is mindful of 

 him in his last extremity, for he quietly said, as he 

 laid back in his pillowed chair, tliat he now slept 

 much and suft'ered little. 



Near this village are some fine specimens of ham- 

 mered limestone fence. Some of the fields bounded 

 by the lake rival the Sciota bottoms in lasting fer- 

 tility ; but the wealthy proprietors show no disposi- 

 tion to put nature's bounty to the test by continual 

 plowing. Four miles south, we come to the first 

 lake bluff, except at Yawger's point; but this is 

 only three-fourths of a mile long, with an altitude 

 of from thirty to eighty feet. It is crowned with 

 a beautiful growth of red cedars, from fence post 

 size, to the tiny shrub, right for transplanting. 



Aurora is a quiet but wealthy village unblessed 

 with corporation laws or taxes, and consequently 

 a stranger to tax eaters. Yet the sidewalks are 

 ample, made of beautiful rectangular calciferous slate, 

 quarried at the head of the lake. There are costly 

 houses; an Italian villa with its tower and niches 

 holding exotic statuary; fine gardens; matchless 

 borders of flowers ; shrubbery, green and evergreen; 

 and such precious as well as late fruit and vegeta- 

 bles, as few locations in Western New York can 

 boast of. The climate is tempered here in winter 

 by the passage of the north-west wind over six 

 miles of the warm, never-freezing lake. But un- 

 like most wealthy villages, Aurora seems to be 

 without its just proportion of the poor and needy, 

 as if to bring to naught that scripture which declares 

 that " the poor ye have always with you." True, 

 here is a Catholic, ycleped Romish, Chapel, with 

 lots of Hibernia's sons and daughters, who live by 

 honest labor ; but they are comparatively rich, no 

 matter how poor they came here. Profiting by the 

 sobriety and economy of their wealthy employers, 

 they soon lay up money; and as land is much 



