THE GENESEE FAEMER. 



179 



SPIEIT OF THE AGRICULTTJEAL PKESS. 



Fattening Poultry. — The London Poultry 

 Chronicle says : " However good your feeding 

 may be, yet while your fowls are at liberty, the 

 food all turns to hard muscle and growth, instead 

 of fat and soft flesh. Exercise is very good for 

 healtli, but it is not a fattening process. Shut up 

 the fowls you wish to fatten in a small coop, allow- 

 ing them just room to stand and change their pos- 

 ition, but no more. Place the coop in a quiet and 

 rather dark place. Let there be a board in the 

 front on which food may be placed, and let them 

 be fed three times per day with ground oats slaked 

 with milk, to such consistence that when placed on 

 the board it will not run off. Allowing this to be 

 the test, it should be as liquid as possible. Let 

 them have three times per day as much as they 

 can eat, and when not feeding let them be covered 

 with mats or sacking. If they are doing well they 

 will heat and steam, and the heat should be per- 

 ceptible to the hand when it is \ ut in. This should 

 fatten them in ten days." 



Heavy Rain Stoi{M in Ouio. — A correspondent 

 of the Ohio C"J.ltivaU,r sajs: "I was coming from 

 Cadiz the 10th of the 4th mo., and got within half 

 a mile of home, when black clouds and some rain 

 admonished me to take sht^lter. I hitched Fip to 

 the fence and ran into a neighbor's house. The 

 rain fell very fast, and in ? few minutes I saw the 

 boards that formed the plank road rushing down 

 on the turbid waters, and I had to wade knee-deep 

 through the foaming tide to give Fip's rein a clip 

 with my knife, at the same time admonishing her 

 to take care of herself, while I did the same by a 

 speedy retreat. The mare found the highest and 

 most protected point in the road, where she re- 

 mained quiet until the flood abated. I believe it 

 is conceded on all hands that rather more water 

 was around about Short Creek at 4 o'clock P. M., 

 on the 10th of this month, than was ever known 

 ^before. No lives lost, but many narrow escapes. 

 It will be a tight squeeze if the company repairs 

 the plank road." 



Changing Pastures. — A writer in the Boston 

 Cultivator says : In many pastures, where the wa- 

 ter is so situated as to allow of it, dividing them 

 l^into lots, and changing the stock in them alter- 

 nately, so as to give the grass an opportunity to 

 get a good growth, would enable them to keep a 

 third more stock. 



The London Poultry Chronicle says "All Co- 

 chin-Ohinas lay small eggs compared to their size." 



"Nature's Mode." — A correspondent of tha 

 Country Gentleman well observes : " I can hardly 

 read an agricultural paper without seeing 'nature's 

 mode ' appealed to and recommended. It is time 

 this argument was discarded. The very fact that 

 LABOR is ordained, shows that nature^smode — which 

 means the practice of neglect and non-interference 

 by the hand of man, when strictly analysed — was 

 never intended by the Creator. Even in paradise, 

 man was to ' dress and keep ' the garden. ' Nature's 

 mode' was afterward pointed out in the growth 

 of ' thorns and thistles.' I have seen fields of corn 

 raised after this mode, the corn and weeds being 

 nearly of equal height, and the product five bushels 

 of green corn per acre. I have seen orchards cul- 

 tivated according to nature's mode — full of suckers 

 and brush. Grapes are frequently raised by this 

 mode, and are two weeks later, smaller in quantity, 

 and incomparably inferior in flavor to those ob- 

 tained by the best artificial pruning and culture. 

 Nature must, in any case, be improved, modified, 

 changed, and heavily mixed with labor and skill, 

 and often entirely tlirown aside, in successful cul~ 

 ture." 



Potatoes in California. — The editor of the Cal- 

 ifornia Farmer says : " During a little trip in Ala- 

 meda County, we went over the ground that was 

 famous in 1853 for ' big 'taters and plenty of them,' 

 and we found the land not run out yet. Such crops 

 and such potatoes would make ' Down Easters ' 

 stare. * * Mr. Hankin very kindly selected us 

 some very pretty samples of small ones, which we 

 find upon weighing are three pounds and upwards." 

 He mentions another farmer in the same county 

 who raised last year 4,000 sacks, about 117 lbs. 

 each, on thirty acres; and "a better quality," he 

 says, " was never sent to market." This is about 

 26G bushels per acre — a good crop, certainly, but 

 not enough to make a "Down Easter" stare so 

 very much after all. 



Air Drains.' — L. H. Lucker, of the Country 

 Gentleman^ speaking of a visit to a farmer while 

 in England, says: Mt. C.'s experience on heavy 

 clay lands, leads him to estimate very highly the 

 importance of having a line of tile at the head of 

 the field, connecting the upper ends of the lateral 

 drains, and open at both ends for the admission of 

 air. He thought the circulation of air thus given 

 through the underground channels on stiff lands 

 of great efficiency in supplying the place of th« 

 abundant pores found in a more open and gravelly 

 soil, and also in admitting, atmospheric air to tb» 

 superincumbent soU. 



