THE GENESEE FARMER. 



285 



found one institution in that large, populous and 

 wealthy State, designed to unite science with prac- 

 tice in farming operations, and thus lay the founda- 

 tion for a higher standard of professional knowledge 

 among farmers. All these efforts have proved una- 

 vailing to overcome the indifference of the many, and 

 the determined hostility of the few. The want of 

 men qualified to serve as professors of agricultural 

 engineering, of the science of breeding and improving 

 live stock, of agricultural physiology, comparative 

 anatomy and veterinary surgery, of agricultural me- 

 teorology, entomology, chemistry, geology, zoology, 

 and other departments of science intimately related 

 to the liberal profession of agi'iculture, has long been 

 the most serious impediment in the way of founding 

 an agricultural college in this country. To educate 

 six or eight professors in Europe, who have to learn 

 one or more foreign languages at the outset, involves 

 an amomit of labor that but few rich persons will 

 perform, and a degree of expense that but few poor 

 men can meet This is the true reason why, with all 

 our taste for reading, and general respect for learning 

 and science, there is not one agricultural text book 

 in any branch of rural affaii-s in the United States, 

 worthy of the name. We have yet to apply the in- 

 ductive system of philosophy to agricultural phe- 

 nomena. We complacently assume to know without 

 books, without schools, without experimental farms 

 or farming, without study or research of any kind, a 

 little more than we should if we availed ourselves of 

 all these advantages, in addition to those we already 

 possess. First and last, there has been sent some 

 millions of dollars to England, France, Spain and 

 Germany, to purchase improved stock ; acting, ap- 

 parently, on the principle that one has only to buy a 

 fine watch to become at once a most skillful watch- 

 maker." 



If young men, like Mr. Johnson, educated in part 

 abroad, throw cold water on the critical study of 

 soils, we see but little use in trying to build up an 

 agricultural literature in this country that shall be an 

 honor to a nation of free and independent farmers. 

 Some of the most valuable elements of fertility in the 

 surface of the ground may be estimated, where they 

 form no larger per centage than that of ammonia in 

 the atmosphere ; which, if our memory serves us 

 rightly, Fkesexius and Wili. ascertained to be only 

 one part in three millions. At another time we will 

 resume the consideration of this subject ; for it is 

 one that deserves the serious attention of every true 

 friend of agriculture as a profession. It is now nearly 

 thirty-three years since Judge Buel introduced the 

 first bill to establish an Agricultural School in this 

 State; and now such an institution seems less likely 

 to be founded in this rich and populous Common- 

 wealth than it did at that early period. 



Hydraulic Ram. — The Banner of Industry says 

 that Joseph D. West, of the city of New York, has 

 made an improvement in Hydraulic Rams, the nature 

 of which consists in a peculiar arrangement of valves, 

 whereby the ram is made double-acting, and the use 

 of weighted or spring valves dispensed with — import- 

 ant considerations, truly. Measures have been taken 

 to secure a patent. 



MIXTURE AND SOWING OF GRASS 

 SEEDS. 



Farmers in this country are much less in the prac- 

 tice of mixing several kinds of grass seeds before 

 sowing them, than in Great Britain ; nor do the ad- 

 vantages of a considerable variety of herbage for 

 farm stock appear to be generally understood. Pas- 

 tures and meadows have not received that critical 

 study in the United States which their great im- 

 portance demands. Land is often poorly prepared 

 for seeding, and still more frequently receives too 

 little seed of any kind. A general and thorough re- 

 form in these regards will do more for American 

 agriculture than any other in the whole range of hus- 

 bandry; and now that stock-growing is profitable, we 

 trust that the improvement of grass lands will be 

 taken up in earnest by County and State Agricultu- 

 ral Societies, and pursued until something more than 

 two blades of grass shall be made to grow where one 

 grew before. 



That our readers may see how this matter is viewed 

 and practiced in England, M-here grazing is carried to 

 great perfection, we copy the following remarks from 

 a recently published standard work on the agiicul- 

 ture of the United Kingdom : 



"Rich old pasture laud returned to grass, after 

 having been broken up and subjected to a course of 

 arational cropping, may be sown, at the rate of five 

 bushels of seeds per acre, with a mixture of meadow 

 fescue, meadow foxtail, round cock's-foot, tall oat- 

 like soft gi-ass, rye grass, meadow cat's-tail, crested 

 dog's-tail, yellow oat, meadow oat, hard fescue, smooth- 

 stalked meadow grass, fertile meadow grixss, nerved 

 meadow grass, marsh bent, florin, creeping vetch, cow 

 clover, and white clover. This mixture is an arti- 

 ficial improvement on that which naturally grows on 

 the best pastures, and simply rejects the worst plants 

 of the natural mixture and adds one or two prime 

 ones ; and it was experimentally tried by the late 

 Mr. Sinclair, with the express view of ascertaining 

 the difference between its produce and that of the 

 natural pasture. The piece of ground broken up 

 for it was cropped during five years with successively 

 oats, potatoes, wheat, carrots, and wheat ; it was 

 found, at the end of five years, to have suffered a 

 very considerable diminution of its organic constitu- 

 ents ; it was then, in preparation for the grass seeds, 

 manured and pulverized ; and between the time of 

 their being sown and the commencement of frost, it 

 received a top dressing of a dry compost of lime, 

 vegetable mold, and rotten farm-yard manure. The 

 produce of the first summer was cut and weighed on 

 the 1st of July, and was found to be one-eighth 

 greater than that of the original or natural grasses 

 on the same piece of ground ; the produce of the 

 first aftermath was found to be one-fifth less than 

 that of the original grasses ; and the produce of the 

 whole of the second year was found to be one-eighth 

 greater than an average year's whole produce of the 

 original grasses. 



" Sandy upland soils, which are broken up for the 

 double purpose of exterminating some of their weeds 

 and least valuable herbage, and of fertilizing them- 

 selves by processes of pulverization and by adding to 

 them clay or marl, may, according to SincLuAie's 



