THE GENESEE FARMER. 



57 



where hay is worth twenty dollars a ton, and oats 

 and coru proportionably high. We are keeping 

 three where hay is worth over a dollar a hundred, 

 and find corn and corn fodder the cheajiest feed for 

 them. Farm horses must be kept at work at least 

 half of the time, to pay their way. In the winter 

 time they can generally be employed in hauling wood, 

 rails, produce to market, lumber and timber. As it 

 costs no more to feed a pair of good Cleveland Bays 

 *han the most clumsy, feeble, ill-formed brutes of the 

 jeighing tribe, of equal weight, every reader will see 

 the wisdom of taking great pains to breed first-rate 

 animals. A Cleveland Bay, imported into Kentucky 

 the past year, sold for more than $2000. This breed 

 is adapted to every service on the farm and road — not 

 to sporting. Our object is simply to invite public 

 attention still more earnestly to this branch of hus- 

 bandry. 



A SiLEsiAX Farm. — We were startled a few mouths 

 ago by the appearance of a letter by M. Rotshke, 

 addressed to M. Vox Thaeh, showing that a farm in 

 Silesia had been cultivated for fourteen yeare by the 

 apphcation of light artificial manures alone. The 

 soil was of good quality; the subsoil generally rich 

 in mineral resources, especially potash. The feldspars 

 often contained in clays. Professor AVay thinks, may 

 bo by decomposition the origin of the double silicate, 

 to which he says the retentive power of clays for ma- 

 nure is mainly attributable. And before him, Pro- 

 fessor Hodges, of Belfast, alluded to the silicate of 

 potash and silicate of alumina as being the resiilt 

 of the decay of the feldspar of granitic roclcs ; he 

 showed, also, by his analysis of the granite from An- 

 nalong, that it is a rock abundant in mineral eleme- 

 raents suitable as food for plants, and gives it as 

 follows: 



Silica, 74.30 



Peroxide of iron, 3.00 



Alumnia, 12.20 



■, Lime, 0.22 



Magnesia, 0.45 



■ Potash and soda, 9.33 



Fluoric acid and water, . 0.50 



100.00 



Hence, the decay of the granitic subsoil of M. 

 EoTSHKE was likely to supply veiy considerable quan- 

 tities of the elements of the crops. Mr. Way shows 

 that 20 crops of wheat, of the not unusual quantity 

 of 35 bushels of grain and 2 tons of straw and chaff, 

 will remove only 5540 lbs., or less than 2 J tons per 

 acre; and that if the soil be calculated at 10 inches 

 in depth, and weighing 1000 tona-per acre, it will only 

 be .248 per cent, of the soil that would thus disappear. 

 The soil was carried on after a crop-aud-fallow prin- 

 ciple — a very exhausting one, and, as we might ex- 

 pect, was by no means profitable. M. Rotshke 

 commenced, therefore, to sell off. Year after year he 

 can-ied away the whole of the produce in grain and 

 straw, and determined to replace these bulky materials 

 by small apphcations of concentrated manure. He 

 began with wheat, and sowed it with 12 cwt. of Rape- 

 cake per acre; then followed potatoes, selling all off 

 as usual ; then barley, then clover, which he removed 

 and sold off as before; then rye, to which he however 

 appUed farm-yard dung; then oats, then clover, plowed 

 xxp, sown with peas and flax. And by thus acting h6 



made money — sometimes as much as £& per acre 

 English being realized by this sale of his produce. 

 He did not, however, confine himself to rapedust as 

 a manure; he applied bones at the rate of about 9| 

 cwt. per acre, and ultimately used Peruvian guano, 

 which he found reason to prefer to either of the above 

 apphcations. The only manure he had seems to be 

 that of a couple of cows ; for he appears to have 

 sold off his horses annually in winter, and then say3 

 by these means he made farming a profitable concern. 

 But after all, did he not apply eveiy element in these 

 plants? — carbonaceous and ammoniacal matter in the 

 rapecake, phosphoric and ammoniacal in the bon( 

 and both in the guano ? And keeping clean, ar 

 being a granitic subsoil, continually dissolving out i 

 elements, with a soil mechanically favorable to tl 

 growth of crops, and indisposed to the rapid prop 

 gation of weeds, M. Rotsuke was enabled to mal 

 profit of what would easily have ruined others.- 

 Journal of the Chemico-Agricultural Society. 



Working Oxen. — I have long found that in i 

 heavy farming operations oxen are most useful, and 

 am convinced every farmer, with one hundred acr 

 of arable land, could work one or two pair to gre; 

 advantage; for deep plowing, drawing Samuelsox 

 Digger, Ducie's Cultivator, and numerous other hea^ 

 implements, oxen will draw greater weights and i 

 quick as horses. In lighter operations the horei- 

 surpass them in speed, but every improvement in a, • 

 riculture now tends to deep, consequently slow, worl 

 and until steam is adapted to drawing our implement 

 oxen will be most useful. They cost much less L. 

 keep, and improve daily in value ; they are easily 

 broken in, may be worked for a few months during a 

 busy season of the year and then fed off. The ap- 

 plication of steam to our threshing machines, turnip 

 and chaff cutters, and the railways lessening the dis- 

 tances at which many deliver their gi'ain, has dimin- 

 ished the winter work of many farmers' horses. Oxen 

 would, in these cases, prove very beneficial in the 

 summer. I know one large occupier who commonly 

 buys eveiy spring four or six paire of working oxen, 

 uses them until all the turnips are sown and cleaned, 

 and then feeds them off in his stalls; and by this 

 course has his work done at two-thirds less cost than 

 by keeping a larger number of horees. In Septem- 

 ber last I purchased two bulls at £10 each, fi'om two 

 dairy farmers; they are now daily plowing and drag- 

 ging, and keep pace with the other teams. As a 

 practical farmer, I should be very sorry to be without 

 some oxen as auxiliaries to my horse teams. — E. W. 

 Wilmot, in the London Gardeners^ Chronicle. 



The value of articles which hare passed down the 

 Erie Canal during the season of 1853 is estimated to 

 be $39,626,362— being $5,242,443 more than the 

 value of the freights last year. 



The true order of learning should be, first, what is 

 necessary; second, what is useful; and third, what is 

 ornamental. To revei-se this an^angement, is like be- 

 ginning to build at the top of the edifice. 



One acquired honor is surety for more. 



