266 



Nr:W ENGLAND FARMER, 



March 9, 1831, 



(sosasawsratsiiaaosrQ, 



FOR THE NEW ENGLAND PARMER. 



PLANTING ON GREENSWARDS. 



Mr Fessenden — In answer to the inquiries of 

 your corrcs^pondent, who styles himself' A Young 

 Farmer,' rehitive to my method of making; the 

 drills and planting corn upon greensward, I will 

 briefly state, that my corn was not ])lanted in 

 hills hut in rows. After turning over the green- 

 sward, preparatory to planting, I did not furrow 

 the ground with a plough. The drills were made 

 by a hand instrument very sinjilar to that which 

 is commonly used in making drills for sowing 

 garden seeds, making three rows at a time. The 

 instrument resembles a lake, having three teeth set 

 in the head, at a sufficient distance from each 

 other to give a proper width between tlie rows, 

 and having a joint near the middle, so that either 

 end of the head tnay rise or fall to accommodate 

 itself to any nnevenness of surface. As liothing 

 more is required than merely to mark out the 

 rows to guide in dropping the seed, the instrument 

 may be so light as to allow of its being easily 

 drawn by a man or boy. If the inverted sward 

 be well harrowed, and compost manure be spread 

 on and mixed with the soil, abundant materials 

 will he foimd for covering the corn. 



Not being a farmer of very long experience, I 

 shall hardly venture to give directions to your cor- 

 respondent, as to the best method of applying 

 fresh iiorse stable dung to greensward that is to 

 be planted with corn. My own practice has been 

 to spread it on the surface before ])li)iighing and 

 turn it under the sward. In tbis way the whole 

 strength of the matnire is preserved, and if any 

 one should apprehend, that, by thus turning it 

 under, the crop will not gel the whole benelit of 

 the manure, let hiiu open the ground between 

 the rows of corn about the time when the ears 

 are filling out, a period at which the crop most 

 requires nourishment, and he will readily discover 

 "hat the roots, aided by the finely pulverized con- 

 dition of the decomposing sod, have found their 

 way to the treasure beneath. This is no doubt 

 the best manner of applying manure, where the 

 depth of the ploughing does not exceed three or four 

 inches. But if the ploughing be deeper, and a 

 considerable portion of the poorer subsoil be turn- 

 ed up, it would be preferable to make a compost, 

 formed of one jsart of stable manure, mixed with 

 two parts of swamp mud or loam, and after allow- 

 ing the whole mass to ferment very moderately. 

 to .spread it on the inverted swaril. Let the com- 

 post thus spread on be well mixed with the soil by 

 tlie use of a hglit harrow drawn lengthwise the 

 furrows and then rolled, and there will be very 

 little if any waste of the nourishing matter by ex- 

 jjosurc to sun and winds. 



For a corn crop I usually spread on from 

 ten to fifteen cart loads of stable manure and from 

 twenty to thirty loads of coni|iflst to the acre. 

 For a crop of Rye or Barley with grass seed or 

 with grass seed alone, sown upon the furrow, a 

 less quantity will suffice. 



Very respectfully, your obedient servant. 



Lexington, March 3,1831. E. PIIINNEY. 



best iiay for cattle on a rich moist loam ? Also 

 what grasses it is profitable to sow with Red-top, 

 and in what proportion to the acre, on the same 

 soil ? Or if it is more suitable to sow it alone, what 

 quantity to the acre ? By publishing the above, 

 yon will greatly oblige A Constant Reader. 

 Hadkij, March 4, 1831. 



GRASSES— Query. 



Mr Fessenden — Will you or some of your 



correspondents have the goodness to inform me 



through the medium of your paper, what grass 



or grasses are the most productive and yield the 



FOR THE NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



BEES. 



Mr Fessenden — In your last paper Mr Beard 

 relates a singular incident which had befallen a hive 

 of his bees in January last. It so happened that 

 the very day before I received the Farmer, I was 

 favored with a letter from a gentleman in Stur- 

 bridge containing an account of a similar mortality, 

 but to a greater extent. Since the setting in of 

 the present winter, he has lost all his young 

 swarms, amounting to seven in number, all of 

 which were plentifully supplied with honey. In 

 December last he placed his hives on a bench in 

 bee house made so perfectly tight that a bee could 

 not escape. He intended to have cut apertures in 

 front of the house corresponding with the en- 

 trance of the hives and placed them in contact, but 

 this was unfortunately neglected. When the hives 

 were moved into the house, the entrances of the 

 hives were closed with a piece of shingle not so 

 tight as to exclude the air entirely ; these were suf- 

 fered to remain two days after the hives were 

 housed and then taken away, and in about ten 

 days, he found two swarms dead, and since then 

 all have died except one old hive that stands upon 

 an empty new hive. Before he discovered that 

 any of the bees were dead, he noticed a consiil^r- 

 able quantity of thin watery honey upon the bot- 

 tom board which dripped down froiTi the comb, 

 lie then examined more closely and found the 

 bees were dead and the hive emited a fetid smell. 

 There was a considerable quantity of frost and ice 

 within the hives, which seemed to be formed 

 from water that ran down the inside of the hives, 

 at one time it nearly stojjped the entrance to'the 

 hives. 



(Sly answer.) 



' Your bees nndoubedly died from suffocation. 

 Being entirely excluded from external air, a preter- 

 natural heat was raised in the hive, the bees were 

 forced into a profuse perspiration, the perspirable 

 exhalations were condensed into water, part of 

 the honey was rendered uncoininonly fluid, and 

 after the bees were dead, no heat remained and 

 the water in the hive was soon frozen. The fetid 

 smell in the hive was occasioned by impure air.' 



Bees cannot survive long without fresh aii-, 

 they arc capable of generating heat sufiicient to 

 support them during the cold of winter; but they 

 camiot sustain a great degree of preternatural heat. 



It appears that Mr Beard's hive was exposed 

 to the open air, and its entrance slopped up but 

 one (lay, yet the steam arising from it was like 

 that from a boiling pot. This fact seems almost 

 inexplicable, and cannot I believe he accounted 

 for upon any other principle, than pent up air. 

 IMr Beard inquires, ' how bees have the power 

 of creating heat, .so as to melt tlieir couj!) at any 

 time when they please,' at the same time says 'he 

 has conjectured the cause.' It is hoped tiiat he 

 will make the |)ublic acquainted with his conject- 

 ure, and also whether he has had hives stopped 

 up in the same manner at any time before. 



In this connexion I am reminded of a fact 

 which always strikes me as inscrutable, and which 



without unquestionable authority I could not re- 

 ceive as even credible. It is, that bees will sur- 

 vive after being buried four feet under the surface 

 of the earth for five or six months as practised in 

 New Hampshire. See New England Farmer, vol. 

 5, page 82, 190, 402, and my Treatise on bees, page 

 119, 120. But I have been informed by Mr Beard 

 that he tried the experiment with three hives and 

 they all came out dead in the spring, and one 

 person in this vicinity lost a hive in the same man- 

 ner. 



I am with respect your obedient servant. 



JAMES THACUER. 



Plymouth, March 4, 1831. 



MAJ. LONG'S GRAPE. 



Mr Fessenden — In the Journal of the Expedi- 

 tion of Major Long, to the Rocky Mountains, me 

 tion is made of a kind of Grape, growing wild ij 

 the country through which the Expedition passei 

 whose excellence is spoken of in terms of thj 

 highest admiration. The following is apart 

 the account of this Gra|)e, extracted from tb| 

 Journal of the Expedition. ' Many of these,' ri 

 furring to the Vines, ' were so loaded with fruit aj 

 to present nothing to the eye but a series of clustei 

 so closely arranged, as to conceal every part of the 

 stem. The fruit of tliese vines is incomparably 

 finer than that of any other native or exotic 

 which we have met with in the United States. 

 I wish. Sir, to make inquiry through the niediuiii 

 of your paper, whether the Vine here spoken 

 of lias been cultivated by any one, and its merits 

 actually tested. If the account of it above giver 

 be correct, adapted as it is to oui- climate, this vine 

 will most likely make a valuable addition to oiu 

 stock of table, and perhaps of wine grapes. In 

 a 11 article in the 57th number of the l.r>iiiloi 

 Quarterly Review on the Valley of the Mi^si^sip|]i 

 the review asserts it to be the J^itis vinifcra oi 

 Wine Grape of Ehu'ope, but I find nothing in the 

 Journal of the Expedition whi<'h would warranl 

 such a conclusion. I have hastily examined Princi 

 Treatise on the Vine, a work which I doubt 

 contains a great fund of useful information as we" 

 as gratifying to every lover of the Vine and exiiibit- 

 ing great research, but I find no satisfactory accoiini 

 of the one in question. I think it probatile it must 

 be indentical with one of two varieties inserted in 

 the Catalogue of Prince's Garden viz. Long'f 

 Missouri and Long's Arkansaw, and of both ol 

 which I think a short sketch is given in the Tren 

 tise, hilt no satisfactory information concerning tl 

 excellence. It wipnld appear probable tliat 

 Messrs Prince with their ardent adnuraiion or 

 the Vine, and their persevering efforts to obtain 

 and disseminate iuformntion upon the i-ubject, 

 would not have omitted effi)rf,s to obtain a varMj 

 or species so highly recommended, and by so W 

 spectable authority, and that it must be incIudeorTn 

 the astonishing number of eighty native varieties 

 described in the Treatise. In Flint's History ami 

 Geography of the Western States, a variety or SI 

 cies of the Orajie Vine, is described which is tin 

 called the I'ivc Jf'oods G>-api; and fs considered 

 be of the same kind with that mentioned by 

 jor Long. It is thus described. ' It ripens in 

 month of June, is cone sliaped, transparent, Wj 

 four seeds, reddi.sh purple, is a fine fruit fir eatil 

 It has a .slender bhii.sh pur[)le Vine, that runs oH 

 the ground among the grass.' It would certainly 

 appear, from all the authorities that there does ex^ 

 ist in the Western Country a species or variettsO: J; 

 the Vine, which if not superior to any of the OB" '' 



