1851 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



289 



Professor Norton, and Analytical Chemistry ap- 

 plied TO AcRicuLTuaE. — No adult reader of Professor 

 Norton's letter and analysis of an article sold for manure, 

 which appeared in our last, could fail to see the great value 

 of the professional labors of that gentleman to the farming 

 interest. It is not from a desise to benefit Prof. N. or his 

 laboratory, that we recommend young men who have the 

 means to attend at least one course of lectures on scientilic 

 agriculture, as delivered in Yale College. The advantage 

 w ill be ffl on the side of the instructed party, not that of the 

 able instructor. No future event is more certain tlian the 

 certainty of their being in a few years a universal demand 

 for cn-iiT.ercial manures. In the preparation of these there is 

 the ?i 'ongost possible temptation to perpetrate fraud on the 

 farming community. It has been a part of our professional 

 duty to learn the fact by experience, that 500 lbs. of night- 

 soil in its natural semi-liquid state, will not form over 100 

 of dry pviidretCe as it ought to be prepared ; and hence, that 

 a really valuable article can hardly be sold at a cent a pound. 

 Suppose, however, that a dealer in fertilizing salts should 

 make 200 lbs. of great strength and value, and divide the 

 same between four excellent farmers and gentlemen of the 

 highest character, fur trial in different States. Of course 

 " the salts" are found exceedingly valuable for v/heat, corn, 

 potatoes, and grass, and are truly certified to by the respect- 

 ive fanners who tried them on tlie crops named. On the 

 strength df these certificates, 3Ir. B. sells to one thousand 

 other farmers, a half ton to each, of what purports to be the 

 same kind of " salts," which they buy as an experiment. 

 The cost of 1000 lbs. being only $10, the seller gets $10,000 



ik cash in hand, and the buyers get a mixture of swamp muck. 



''r lime, and very fine sand, worth much less than the freight 

 home to the farm. These one thousand cheated cultivators 

 will not be likely to put their heads into the lion's mouth a 

 second time ; but it will be an easy matter to procure with a 

 good article, anotl>er batch of certificates, and to extract 

 $10,000 next year from the pockets of another thousand 

 farmers never before bitten in that way. Science is the only 

 preventive of such frauds, and an independent Press to give 

 it a faithful report for the protection of the farming interest, 

 regardless of personal consequences. 



BIulticaul Rye. — Daniel P. Bigelow, of Barre Centre, 

 left in our office some heads of rye of extraordinary size and 

 beautj', measuring eight and a half inches in length. The 

 variety is known as the Multicaul Rye. It was received 

 from the Patent Office by a gentleman in Vermont. It was 

 treated according to the directions accompanying it, which 

 were as f jUows : 



" Sow in the month of August, or sooner, and as soon as it 

 gets up and well started, turn on your stock and pasture it 

 during the fall, and again in the spring, until the first of May. 

 It being necessary to pasture until late in the spring, other- 

 wise it prows too tall." 



Mr. B. says ; " It was recommended to yield from forty 

 to sixty bushels per acre, and I think it will bear the recom- 

 mendation, as it yielded over forty bushels the present 

 year.'" 



Coal in Western Pennsylvania. — On the line of the 

 canal which extends from Beaver to Erie, there are strata of 

 coal four feet in thickness, a specimen of which, analysed 

 by Dr. James R. Chilton of New York, gave the following 

 result : 



Carbon 90.043 



Hydrogen, 4.620 



Nitrogen, 2.917 



Ash, 2.420 



100.000 

 This analysis shows the coal to be of an excellent quality ; 

 and it is said to be not inferior to the celebrated Cannel coal 

 of Scotland. 



A City Youth in Love with the Farmer's Life. — A 

 young man in New York city, who has taken the Genesee 

 Farmer for a number of years, and paid for several years yet 

 in advance, wishes to become a farmer. He has studied the 

 theory of farming, and now wishes to engage with suine 

 practical farmer, so that he may learn to unite theory with 

 practice. But we give his own story in his own words. 

 He writes us ; 



" I believe that farming, to be profitable, requires much 

 headwork as well as manual labor. And why should it not? 

 There is no business, in my humble esiimation, to which so 

 little OT/wtd has been applied. A business that will support 

 so many who appear to make so little use of their heads, 

 ought to richly pay one who makes a good use of his men- 

 tal faculties. 



" I have endeavored to learn the theory of agriculture by 

 every means in my power, having a hbrary of from fifty to 

 sixty volumes on various agricultural subjects. Perhaps you 

 say I may have a library, but that I may not read and study 

 its contents, therefore what is the use of my having one ? 

 But I read_ my books, and try not only to read but to 1-emem- 

 her, for it is not what we read but what we remember that 

 benefits us. I also take four agricultural papers, three of 

 which are published in this State, and one in Ohio. I sub- 

 scribed to your excellent journal in 1850, for live years. 

 Tlius you will see that I have done all that 1 could to pre- 

 pare myself for a farmer's life. Being unacquainted with 

 any farmer to whom I might apply, 1 concluded that the 

 only way by which I could obtain a situation on a farm, 

 was to presume so far on your kindness as to ask you if you 

 would be willing to get one with some good flirmer for me."' 



Any farmer wishing to lend an enterprising young man a 

 helping hand, may correspond with us and we will furnish 

 his address. We have given some of our own experience in 

 the pursuit of agricultural knowledge, in another page. 



Manures — Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral. — Mr. 

 Levi Bartlett, of Warner, N. H., is writing a series of 

 articles on manures, which are printed in the Boston Jour- 

 nal of Agriculture. He gives great prominence to the ex- 

 periments of Prof. Way, which go to show that salts of 

 ammonia are decomposed in clay soils and the base (ammo- 

 nia) retained in combination with alumina in an insoluble 

 condition. It seems not to have occurred to Mr. Bartlett 

 nor to Mr. Way, that if rain water does not dissolve this 

 new compound of ammonia, as they allege, then it can not 

 possibly enter the roots of plants to nourish them. Tiieir 

 theory proves too much in denying the solubility of ammo- 

 nia \n any form. To be of any value as food for growing 

 vegetables, it must be either a soluble gas or a soluble salt 

 to pass through the cell walls and capilliary tubes of plants. 

 Crenic and apocrenic acids found in spring and river water 

 doubtless derive their nitrogen from ammonia and decaying 

 vegetables dissolved out of soils. Alumina has a strong 

 affinity for ammonia, but not to the extent claimed. 



White Australian Wheat. — Mr. Davison, from whom 

 we procured the Australian Wheat of which drawings are 

 given in this number, writes us : "I have raised from 5 

 grains G5 heads — averaging 13 heads to each grain ; these 

 65 heads produced 9 ounces af clean wheat, averaging 97 

 grains to each head — making in all 6305. This wheat does 

 not grow taller than our common wheat, but the stalk is un- 

 commonly stout, and with me has shown no appearance of 

 rust. I like this wheat much, and have sent some to my 

 son in Bedford county, Virginia, for trial there." 



A friend writes that he wishes to purchase a farm con- 

 tiguous to railroad, containing two or three hundred acres, 

 for the purpose of raising and and fatting South Down sheep. 

 Persons having such to dispose of, mny communicate with 

 us. or Z. B. Wakeman, Rockton, Herkimer Co., N. Y. 



The occupying of so much room by index, tfcc, crowds 

 out much other matter prepared for this number. 



