380 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER 



APRIL. 19, IS 4 3. 



in^. The first third is worlli more tlian the last 

 two thirds of the season. 



5. The regular extension of the silk business 

 may now be anticipated. It has outlived the dis- 

 astrous revulsion of J8-39. All our agricultural 

 journals are now friendly, and most of them are 

 zealously engaged in promoting it. The political 

 press is every where ready to publish any candid 

 statements on the subject. Unprincipled specula- 

 tors in trees have all left the field, and the whole 

 silk business has fallen into new and belter hands. 

 They did ih'J cause imnieuse mischief. By their 

 operations in 1830, and especially in the wanton 

 destruction of their trees in 1840, they practically 

 proclaimed that mulberry trees have no intrinsic 

 value. It has taken the regular silk growers two 

 or three jears to undo the mischief. Vet we have, 

 in a very desirable and encouraging degree, done ,yith weeds or drought. 



CURIOUS METHOD OF PLANTING CORN" 

 Mr John W. Sweet, of Tyringham, Berks'iire 

 county, informs us that he plants his corn in the 

 following manner, and has realized 110 bushels 

 shelled corn to the acre. 



He spreads what manure he intends for the field, 

 on the surface of the green-sward ; then he plows 

 the land into ridges about three feet apart in the 

 fall — each ridge or row being made of two back 

 furrows turned upon a narrow strip of sward, which 

 is not disturbed. In the spring, he rolls and har- 

 rows these ridges, and on llie lop of each ridge, 

 12 or 14 inches apart, lie plants his hills of corn, 

 3 or 4 kernels in the hill, and cultivates his corn 

 through the season with the hoe, cultivator and 

 plow, as much as he deems necessary. By tliis 

 method, lie remarked, that he was not troubled 



it. Trees are now appreciated, and some sales 

 made at small prices. From this time, the silk busi- 

 ness cannot be extended at all without creating a 

 corresponding demand for trees. The new tariff, 

 by placing this business on a level v.'ith the other 



In the fall, as soon as his corn is ripe, he gath- 

 ers the ears, then pulls up all the corn-stalks, and 

 lays them down lengthways between the furrows, 

 and then splits the ridges with his plow, and covers 

 the stalks up completely. Thus is made his ridge 



great interests of the country, gives it a passport , for his second crop of corn, to be planted the sue- 

 to the confidence of business men. Our manufac- ceeding spring. The 1 10 bushels was the second 



turers, in some cases, are now shaping their busi- 

 ness in reference to taking up silk. Othets will 

 do the same, as tlie times shall seem to justify. 

 This aids the growing of silk. The amount of 

 silk made in years past has been rapidly increasing 

 each year just about doubling upon the preceding 

 year. In all the States where legislative bounties 

 are given, we have the means of showing this in- 

 crease with great precision. I called upon our 

 State Treasurer in Boston a few days since, and 

 he kindly gave nie the following statement, show- 

 ing how this matter stands in Massachusetts: 

 18.36, $71 37 



1837, 198 00 



1838, 350 52 



1839, 434 C2 



1840, 1233 59 



1841, 2111 42 

 1842— to Oct. 1. 3351 91 

 In view of these results, secured amidst all the 



multiplied discouragements that we have had to 

 contend with, what may be hoped for now that we 

 have surmounted these discouragements and gained 

 public confidence ? Another consideration, calcu- 

 lated to urge the business forward, is found in the 

 fact that all our present agricultural staples are 

 now extremely depressed, and are likely to remain 

 so. The market is completely glutted. Our far- 

 mers must take up something new, or their suffer- 

 ings will be prolonged indefinitely. In this crisis, 

 silk comes to their aid. In the production of this 

 article, they cannot glut the market for one whole 

 generation most assuredly." 



Fesding Poultry. — Professor Gregory, of Aber- 

 deen, in a letter to a friend, observes, "As I sup- 

 pose you keep poultry, I may tell you that it has 

 been ascertained, that if you mix with their food a 

 sufficient quantity of egg-shells or chalk, which 

 they cat greedily, they will lay twice or thrice as 

 many eggs as before. A well fed fowl is disposed 

 to lay a vast number of eggs, but cannot do so 

 without the materials for the shells, however nour- 

 ishing in other respects her food may be ; indeed, 

 a fowl fed on food and water, free from carbonate 

 of lime, and not finding any in the soil, or in the 

 shape of mortar, would lay no eggs at all." 



duced and perpetuated. Thus the forest land, fo 

 centuries subject to a mighty growth, from yeart 

 year not only increases in fertility, by an annua 

 top-dressing, fitted to the very purpose for whici 

 it IS wanted, and composted by the unerring haa-. 

 of Deity, bnt also, from year to year, has some, 

 thing to spare for the good of man and beast. 



Thus in the vegetable as in the animal world 

 there is a wise provision that each shall be sus 

 tiiined and reproduced ; and as these natural lawi 

 are more and more developed by science, we maj 

 expect the purposes of Infinite Wisdom, as to thi 

 vegetable world, will be less and less frnslratec 

 by the hand of unskillful culture. — Boston Trav. 



crop planted over the buried stalks. 



The above is sufficient to give the reader an 

 idea of this system. He contends that after the 

 first crop ho wants no manure for his corn, except 

 the stalks applied as we have described. 



It is quite probable, the three sods and manure 

 being under the corn the first year, that while 

 these are undergoing decomposition, being the 

 whole period of tlie growth of the corn, the crop 

 will sufTer less from drought than it would were 

 there no vegetable matter beneath it to attract and 

 detain moisture till its decomposition is completed. 



As to the fact that cornstalks are the best ma- 

 nure for corn, the idea is strictly philosophical, and 

 is fully sustained by chemical analysis. The doc- 

 trine seems to be well settled, that each crop re- 

 quires its own peculiar food, and unless the soil 

 contains this, the crop will not flourish. Hence 

 the necessity of rotation of crops, or the well es- 

 tablished fact, with practical men, that potatoes 

 will not thrive for many years in succession on the 

 same piece, because the crop has already exhaust- 

 ed the soil of the peculiar food of the potato, while 

 some other crop requiring a diflferent kind of food 

 from the potato, will succeed well on the same 

 land where the potato has failed ; — thus as the ox 

 and the sheep, when put to the same stack of hay, 

 the one will eat what the other leaves ; so it is 

 with plants. 



Now, if you shoot a partridge, and cut open its 

 crop, and find in it acorns and buds, you at once 

 infer that acorns and buds are the natural food of 

 the bird. So when by chemical analysis you as- 

 certain the precise elements of which corn-stalks 

 are made, you have ascertained precisely what kind 

 of food the corn crop requires. Now as cornstalks 

 contain the very elements of the food required by 

 the corn crop, and return to th° soil all the substan- 

 ces of which they exhausted the soil, the chemis- 

 try of agriculture teaches us that cornstalks while 

 undergoing decomposition, furnish the growing 

 crop with those very gases required for the elabo- 

 ration of the solid stock and ears. 



But this is not only the conclusion of science, 

 but a universal law of the vegetable world, by 

 which an all-wise and bountiful God has provided 

 that each precise species of plants shall be repro^; 



From the Farmer's Cabinet. 



LOW PRICES. 

 For the first time in my life — now a pretty ex 

 tended period — I have this day sold a fine fat pig 

 weighing 100 pounds, for 3 1-2 cents per pound 

 receiving for it just three dollars and a half! whicI 

 as it was of real pure Berkshire blood, is a surr 

 less than I was offered for it at six weeks old. 



We are indeed fallen upon eventful times — ant 

 are tempted to ask, first, what has caused the be 

 fore unheard-of depression of farm produce ; ant 

 second, what will be the,endof it? Now, as : 

 live in a retired part of the country, and see bui 

 little of the world, and hear less of it, exceptor 

 market days, I suppose I am not expected to knon 

 much about it, except that "such things are ;" am 

 yet when one is made to smart so severely unde 

 such an infliction as that which now oppresses us 

 it is but natural that we should complain, and thai 

 It is but reasonable that we should be able to saj 

 what ails us. 



You must know, then, I purchased the smal 

 place which I now occupy, eight years ago ; i 

 was then almost in a state of nature, and for thi 

 first four years I had enough to do to '' clear m; 

 teeth," as the saying is ; but when I had any thinj 

 to sell, I obtained a fair price for it, and got for 

 ward, although it was by slow degrees ; but afte 

 four years more of hard labor, and now that I an 

 able to raise better crops, the prices which I ar 

 compelled to accept for them, brings me back t 

 the state of destitution which I suffered at thi 

 first, without the hope that by my exertions I shal 

 ever be able to overcome my difficulties. 



I may be wrong, but it strikes me that one causi 

 for the very low prices of agricultural produce ie 

 the over-supply of our markets; for unless I an 

 much deceived, there were not such enormou 

 quantities of produce brought to the market eigh 

 years ago, as now. 



Too many are flocking into the agricultural pro 

 fession. And if to this be added, the facility ofTei 

 ed by railroads and canals, to pour in the produc 

 of lands once quite out of the reach of the sea 

 board ; with the continually increasing stream c 

 emigrants from foreign countries, whose grand re 

 source is agriculture — how, in the name of "Pc 

 litical Economy," are times for the farmer ever t 

 mend ? 



Some, to whom I have applied for 'a solution c 

 the difficulty, are of opinion, that the prices c 

 land and labor must fall ; but will not this add t 

 the pressure, by inducing a greater number of fan 

 laborers to become land-holders, and grow food fo 

 themselves .' 



It has been proposed in the "Cabinet," that va 



