38 WHEAT CULTUEE. 



FIFTH Where large flouring and coopering operations 

 are carried on, many laborers of different classes are em- 

 ployed. They, in turn, aid the prosperity of the gar- 

 deners, orchardists, and small farmers, by consuming 

 and making market for their vegetables, milk, fruits, 

 and poultry products, to a considerable extent, upon 

 which, generally, better profits are realized than on their 

 wheat. Hence the agricultural classes should do what 

 they can toward the building of mills in their neighbor- 

 hoods, which will flour all of their surplus wheat before 

 it leaves the vicinity where it is raised ; and then the 

 farmers should seek to get back to their own premises as 

 much of the bran and shorts as they well can, to feed 

 the stock and soil. 



THE STBAW NOT TO BE SOLD. 



It is certainly bad policy to sell the straw off of the 

 farm, as it largely contains the soluble silica of the soil, 

 which is so essential to make a vigorous, healthy crop of 

 wheat. There are of late so many ways for using up straw> 

 in making coarse paper and other fabrics, in towns and 

 cities, which give it a merchantable price that offers 

 tempting inducements for farmers to haul it to town for 

 sale, in many districts, to the injury of their lands, by 

 robbing them of their silica, without an adequate return. 

 This in the long run will prove ruinous, unless an equiv- 

 alent of useful manure of some kind is carried back and 

 supplied to the soil. Nothing is really an equal substitute 

 for straw except good stable manure, swamp muck, and 

 leaf mould. 



