AND HORTICULTURAL K E G I S T K R . 



157 



\:tn\ to Uctobor, for novenil yearn punt, with 



> (ition of throo weeks bolwocn tlio first ond 



iittinfru wlioii t'l'd upon tiri'g. I find llmt 



i inmiiUiin tlicinselvos in conditi>n witli- 



I, and perform their work l>etlcr thin otiiers 



I nro fed upon cut clover, tarca, \,c , and one 



iliel of oats each per week. A fine piece of 



erne I calculate to bo worth froRi QO/. to 25/. 



acre; if cut for hay it nhoiild be thoroughly 



ic, us heating upon the slack spoils it, and 



kes It inouMy. 



ROBERT BAKER. 

 IfrUlte, Ksitx. 



For lh« N. E. Farmer. 



SCRAPS FRO.M MEMORY. 

 Ft is with no little ditfidcnce, Mr Editor, that I 

 empt to commuDicalo any thin<; for your pages 

 ;>ertaining to prtTciicni matters in agriculture, for 

 m yet young and have no thorough knowledge of 

 ! op<^rations of the farm. I was always fond to 

 ault of agricultural pursuits: I always loved the 

 lort of the field : no other employment is so con- 

 ninl to my disposition. In former years, during 

 bi-yhood, many a time after having toiled all 

 rht in a mechanical business, have I gone the 

 t day (which we had for leisure, in recompense 

 our night's work,) some miles out of the town 

 a farmer friend's, and helped him plant, or hoe, 

 harvest, as the season might be, and esteemed 

 day, sleepy and exhausted as I was. At a later 

 iod I resided at one time ten months upon a 

 ge farm. During this time I learned many of 

 ! practices in cultivation : I wish I could have [ 

 n able to have learned more : I wish now, with 

 Alcott, that I had the means of becoming a | 

 !w England farmer upon a small scale : soon 

 uld I bid adieu to the city — its sickening pomp, 

 empty hoartedness, its squallid poverty and its 

 Ijhts of misery. But fortune's promises to me 

 3 inauspicious. — It is easy to sny that one may 

 in whatever he resolves to attain, and the pre- 

 pt perhaps gives a wholesome spur to young am- 

 ion ; and this, again, Cardinal Richelieu tells us, 

 should know no such -word as/oi7" — but after all 

 kig assurance, dear sir, how often is the merito- i 

 IDS and modest youth doomed to plod through the 

 )rld without friendly aid, and in many cases de- 

 luded of the small pittance which he earns by ] 

 nest labor, while he who is his superior only in I 

 ■3 stock of impudence, lives in the sunshine ofl 

 osperity. " Alan is the master of his own desti- ' 

 ," siys Victor Cousin — and the proposition is a | 

 ry pretty one to repeat — very pretty ; but in the 

 ly I take its signification, it appears, in its effect, 

 be exceedingly similar to the efficacy of that j 

 ecies of charity which says to the needy appli- ' 

 .nt, "Be ye fed, and be ye clothed." — I ask no I 

 her encouragement than this — that whatever I 

 in permitted to earn by the toil of my head and 

 iinds, be promptly paid me in good faith. — E.vcuse 

 «, sir, for obtruding so much of my private opin- 

 318 upon your attention : I surely did not mean 

 hen I commenced this, to betray thus much of 

 y feelings upon this matter. I will now come 

 what I designed to communicate. | 



Upon reading the article in a late number of 

 )ur paper headed " Important Discovery in .^wrj-l 

 ihure," in which it was stated that in the experi- j 

 ent of which an account is given, that the seed 

 heat sown in the fall was covered with a laying ' 



of straw, I was n^minded of an cxpcrinioiit made 

 by n farinor with whom (as before in<<ntioni'd) I 

 once resided. The cases, I know wore disfiiiiilur, 

 hut the idea of protecting fall-pown gram with 

 some kind of a covering, as cxpn'sscd in lliu ac- 

 count, brought ti> my mind the circuiiislance which 

 I will relate, and to which I was a witness. Wish. 

 iiig to bring into grass a piece of ground wliich 

 had for several years been used us a vcj^ctablc 

 garden, ho sowed it in the full with grain — of what 

 kind 1 do not now remember. After the plants 

 had come up to the height of about three inches, 

 and before the ground had been frozen of any con- 

 sequence, he covered the pieco with a thin coating 

 of eel grass from the shore of a salt bay near which 

 he resided. In the spring, the plants came up 

 most promisingly, evidently, in the opinion of all 

 who witnessed them, much benefited by th'.ir cov- 

 ering during the winter. The crop (I think it was 

 wheat,) matured well and produced an cxtraordinaiy 

 yield of fine plump grain, whilst a piece of the 

 same belonging to an adjoining farmer, was cut 

 down for fodder long before harvest time. Query 

 — did not the plants derive some benefit from the 

 saline properties of their covering ? 1 have thought 

 they might. j 



One more scrap. It was an invariable practice j 

 with the same farmer, to give his sheep rock weed I 

 fresh from the shore, twice or thrice a week through 

 ail the year when the ice did not prevent its being 

 obtained. They used to eat it greedily, and I have 

 often smiled to see them come in from " the swamp" 

 so regularly for their treat, and demand to be 

 served. I never could refuse a sheep a favor, they 

 ask it with such an imploring expression of coun- 

 tenance. The flock were aUvays in excellent 

 health and condition. I suppose the rock-weed 

 answered the same beneficial purpose as manufac- 

 tured salt. 



One more. As every thing which is capable of 

 increasing the earth's products, must be a matter 

 of prime importance to the farmer, I will relate the 

 effects which followed the application of a mixture 

 of blue mud and old mortar to a plat of ground, 

 which I learned from the lips of the experimenter, 

 a neighbor to the farmer above referred to. In 

 digging a well upon his premises, the workmen 

 struck a stratum of blue clay several feet in thick- 

 ness, which attracted the attention of the proprie- 

 tor by the peculiarity of its quality, seeming, as 

 he expressed it, sonpy, and with the exception of 

 its color, precisely like new made putty. He 

 thought if mixed with some other material it might 

 answer as a fertilizer. The year previous he had 

 torn down a large old dwelling-house on his premi- 

 ses, and the old mortar which accrued from this, 

 had b^en thrown into a heap and left near the site. 

 These two materials he mixed together in the fall, 

 by alternate layers of each, covered over and the 

 mass left untouched till spring. He then broke up 

 a piece of thin sandy soil, well known as white 

 pine plains. To this he applied the mixture of mud 

 and mortar as far as it would go, and dressed the 

 remainder of the piece liberally with stable manure 

 whicii had been sheltered during the winter, and 

 planted the land with potatoes. At harvest, ho 

 found that the portion which had the dung had done 

 best; but in the succeeding crops of barley and 

 clover, the burden on i7 was not over half so great 

 iS that on the compost. And the barley which 

 grew on the portion dressed with the mud and mor- 

 tar, was such for fineness of quality, that ha sold 

 all of it he would spare, at an extra price, for seed. 



But enough of your scraps, for this time, per- 

 haps you Hay, .Mr IMifir. Well, 1 don't know that 

 It will do to threaten you with any inoro. I'orhapa 

 in inditing the fon-going I may have dona it at 

 the expense of being laughed at, by thotiu who have 

 Ined longer in the world, as a rrtailer of oW neirt. 

 If so, I will niuxteroll my philosophy ond — langh 

 loo. It Is a practice wiUi mo not to pass liy even 

 an old rusty nail without picking it np or kicking 

 it into the notico of suinu one else. In the hope that 

 it may be of service to somebody : and it was the 

 same motive, air, which mtluenced mo to communi- 

 cate iho preceding "snatches from memory." 



Respectfully, &.c. J. H. D. 



LITERARY. 



The lioslon ^fiscellnny of Literature and Path- 

 ion. Published by Bradbury & Soden. — The first 

 No. of this work wo have looked at with more at- 

 tention than we have of late been able to bestoir 

 upon most things literary. But the motions and 

 complexion of our fingers ond the tenor of our 

 thoughts arH so rustic, that we begin to ihink that 

 we are a bear, culling flowers from the garden, 

 when we undertake to gather beauties in the bow- 

 crs of elegant literature. Yet as Bruin has pre- 

 ferences, though his taste may not be very refined, 

 so we are not equally pleased with all that is offer- 

 ed for our reading. — This work is " got up" in un- 

 commonly good style, and its literary merit is 

 greater than is often found in periodicals. Should 

 future numbers equal the promise of the first, this 

 Miscellany will be prized highly by readers of re- 

 fined and delicate taste. — Kd. N. E. F. 



MASS. HOKTICUUTURAL SOCIETY. 



EXHIBITION OF FRriTS. 



Saturday, , Aow. C. 



A basket of Duciiess d' Angouleme Pears from 

 Mr E. Vose, Dorchester. Take the basket togeth- 

 er, they were the choicest specimens that had ever 

 been exhibited at the hall for the season. 



Dix Pears, from the original tree, by Rev. Dr 

 Harris, Boston. 



Fine specimens of Colmar Sovereign, Beurre 

 Diel, Urbaniste and Glout Morceau Pears, with a 

 kind unknown, from John Prince, Jamaica Plains, 

 Roxbury. For the Committee, 



B. V. FRENCH. 



Flowers and Bails of tlie Red Potato. Has any 

 one ever seen any flowers or balls on the Long Red 

 Potato? We never have seen any. This variety, 

 it is said, was brought from the River La Plata, in 

 South America, nearly or quite thirty years ago, 

 and retains its characteristic properties better than 

 any other variety of the potato tribe that has been 

 cultivated. In this State, it continues to grow un- 

 til the frost comes and kills its vines, and the po- 

 tato itself does not really come to maturity until the 

 following spring. If it is planted in a rich soil, a 

 little inclined to moisture, it will produce heller 

 than any other potato that we have. We should 

 like to obtain some of the balls, if any one has any 

 to spare. — Wai'nc Farmer. 



xff^Br. Holmes — You arc rather late in your call, 

 or wc could have furnished you to your heart's con- 

 tent. This variety of the potato here bears balls in 

 great profusion ; but it is not as prolific now as it 

 was in the days of oiir boyhood, when few, if any, 

 balls loriiied upon its vines. — Ed. N. E. F. 



