130 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[September, 



that liave resulted from an intelligent use of 

 them. These are matters the farmer will ob- 

 tain a knowledge of througli his observation 

 and experience, under the direction of those 

 who make the traffic in them a local specialty. 

 Something may also depend on the nature of 

 the soil to which he proposes to apply the 

 marl, and the particular kind of crop he in- 

 tends to raise. Dealers in marl will cheer- 

 fully impart all the information they possess, 

 either verbally or through explanatoty circu- 

 culars and pamphlets ; and as the dealer's own 

 permanent interest is as deeply involved as 

 that of his patrons, it would add nothing to 

 his ultimate reputation or profit, to misrepre- 

 sent or deal fraudulently. There is one thing, 

 however, of which the farmer may be well 

 assured, and that is, that in the domain of 

 progressive agriculture marl is making a 

 steady, if not a rapid headway, and every 

 advancing year will witness its wider exten- 

 sion. The truck-gardeners in the vicinities 

 of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cam- 

 den and elsewhere, have availed themselves 

 sf its recuperating powers these many years, 

 and it has been to them the most potent aid 

 in their system of cropping. Fossil marl as a 

 fertilizer of corn, potatoes, wheat, grass, 

 flowers, fruit trees, tobacco, and vegetation 

 generally, needs only to be honestly and intel- 

 ligently tried, in order to its general adoption 

 where a fertilizer is needed. 



THE DROUTH. 



Some of Its Blessings. 



Amid the loud and constant conjplaints of our 

 present protracted drouth, no one has yet found 

 time or heart to speak a word of, contentment or of 

 gratitude. Let me ask my brother farmers to look 

 ou both sides of this absorbing question and see if 

 tliey cannot find some cause of congratulation in 

 what they, "with the rest of mankind," regard as 

 an unmitigated calamity. 



The first cause of gratulation is the general 

 health that the drofith produces.- We are freftd, al- 

 most entirely, from the frightful curse of the ague, 

 and other malarial diseases that follow upon a wet 

 season and that owe their birth and life to the de- 

 composition of an immense vegetable growth. 



Second — A protracted spell of dry weather will 

 add greatly to the destruction of the seeds of many 

 noxious weeds, and thus leave the places that they 

 occupy for the future growth of food plants. 



Third— Owe lands, like our bodies, require rest, 

 and a drouth is a rest to our soils. If seasons of 

 perpetual fertility should occur, one of two things 

 would happen : Either onr fields would grow up in 

 weeds that would require, in each successive year, 

 additional labor to eradicate, or our farms would be 

 rendered totally unfit in a short time for the cultiva- 

 tion of our three great cereals— corn, wheat and 

 oats— which crops cultivated successively on the 

 same soil (with a total disregard of chemical affini- 

 ties) would necessitate the introduction of new 

 food plants, or the constant application of costly ar- 

 tificial manures. 



i^'oHcWi- There is imprisoned beneath our soils an 

 exhaustless fund of manures in Jthe shape of gases 

 that can only be reached by heat. These natural 

 reservoirs of fertility are kept down by the pressur^ 

 of moisture and by shade. They exist in beds of 

 humus (vegetable mould), or in a virgin soil too 

 deep to be reached by the plow. That they exist is 

 known to every observant farmer, from the simple 

 fact that soils taken from a considerable depth be- 

 low the surface, as from the excavation of a well, 

 will produce for the first year or two a very luxuri- 

 ant growth. Their evolution of latent force, reached 

 only and generally diflused by heat, makes itfelf 



beneficially apparent by the next year's crop ; 

 for old farmers will remember, with me, the 

 drouth of 1854 and the great product of 1855, and 

 also other snecessive seasons of drouth and abun- 

 dance. 



Fifth — A drouth forces us to agricultural econo- 

 mies. As a class our farmers are proverbially waste- 

 ful. To a stranger it *vould seem that feeding corn 

 to hogs and hay and fodder to cattle on the muddy 

 ground is regarded by so many of us as the perfec- 

 tion of husbandry, and that the burning of our straw 

 piles is imperatively demanded by the necessary use 

 for tlie next year of the ground ^thus occupied. It 

 seems almost useless to denounce a practice 

 that is so continuously and so dangerously fol- 

 lowed by men who aspire to the reputation 

 among their neighbors of good farmers. If 

 this drouth shall teach us to make shelter for our 

 cattle and subsequent manure from the straw (if any 

 remains unburned), or to lay planks or rails or 

 poles on the ground where our hogs are fed on corn 

 (if any of us shall have any corn), then this much 

 calumniated season will not have been in vain. 

 During the last severe winter I fed and kept fat all 

 my horses and cattle on wheat and rye straw, saved- 

 in my barn and cut up by a straw cutter, mixed 

 with bran and occasionally sprinkled with salt water. 

 I have found clean wheat straw, thus saved and 

 used as food for cattle, as good as over-ripe hay. 



I will not bore your readers any further, but will 

 say to my brethren of the plow that, if they will 

 look at this thing right, they will come to regard 

 this drouth as a blessing in disguise. — An Old 

 Farmer. 



We clip the foregoing from the Missouri 

 Republican, a copy of which, with the article 

 marked, was sent to us personally. We print 

 it entire, because it contains a level-headed 

 philosophy, which is not met with every day 

 among those people whose pecuniary interests 

 are affected by the "drouth" more or less dis- 

 astrously : and when we say people we do 

 not intend to discriminate against any special 

 vocation, but mean the fidgety, discontented, 

 and unthankful among all classes of people. 

 Any sound moral sentiment addressed to any 

 avocation, that is calculated to help those 

 who labor therein to " possess their souls in 

 patience," is as wholesome to the mind, as 

 the most improved and approved agricultural 

 product is to the body. Rainy-day philoso- 

 phers are abundant, and the more time they 

 have to house themselves and philosophize, .as 

 they sit and contemplate the fatness that is 

 dropping down from the skies on the bosom 

 of their thirsty soil, the more selfish they 

 become, and the less inclined to bear a cross, 

 when peradventure it is thrust upon them. 

 - But the dry-day philosophers are not many;, 

 at least there are not many who find occasion 

 to thank God through the medium of the 

 public press, that matters are not worse, or 

 that our direst calamities may have their 

 compensations, if we only could cultivate suf- 

 ficient patience to perceive and appreciate 

 them. 



"Master, thieves have driven away the ox 

 and we shall have no beef." "Well then, we 

 will have to fatten up the old cow." "But 

 thay have driven the cow away with the ox." 

 "Then John, we will have to content our- 

 selves with mutton." "But Master the 

 wolves have killed all the sheep, and we are 

 are utterly undone." "Still, John, the wool is 

 left; we can shear that off and buy bread.'' 

 The philosophy involved in such an experi- 

 ence is akm to that of the "Old Farmer," al- 

 though it docs not include the principle of re- 

 cuperative compensation. 



A very dry summer of nearly fifty years ago 

 now looms up before us. On that occasion, 

 one man in the town was so pressed for time 

 that he could not atttend to the proper culti- 

 vation of his "potato patch," Jind felt too 

 poor to hire help, and consequently it was 

 overrun with weeds; and as nobody expected 

 a crop, even mlth cultivation, on account of 

 the protracted drouth, he neglected them en- 

 tirely. But when the time to harvest them 

 came, he was the only man who was able to 

 gather anything like a crop. The weeds 

 shaded his vines and kept them green until 

 the tubers matured, whilst the vines of others 

 were burnt up before they could mature a tu- 

 ber. Now, although is this not intended to 

 favor negligent culture, it may illustrate that 

 even under the most adverse circumstances 

 tliere may be resultant compensations, and 

 may also involve a hint relating to protec- 

 tion against the scorching effects of a long and 

 intense drouth; and that there is a "Divinity 

 that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we 

 will;" but the lesson amounts to nothing at 

 all if vi'e are too obtuse to percieve that that 

 Divinity operates through rational means, 

 which are facilitated by human co-operation. 



AN UNGATHERED HARVEST. 



Now, when the sumac is coloring the hills from 

 the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico with its rich crim- 

 son, is the time to draw the attention of our agricul- 

 turists to the scheme of the Agricultural Bureau 

 for making it a source of real profit to the country. 

 The leaves of the sumac are used, as our readers 

 know, for purposes of tanning, and the varieties 

 spontaneously produced in the United States, while 

 not so valuable for this use as the Sicilian, are hardy 

 and bear tne changes of our climate. It has hither- 

 to proved impossible to acclimate either Sicilian, 

 French or Spanish sumac '.in this country. The im- 

 portation of foreign sumac averages 8,000 tons an- 

 nually, outside of an immense amount smuggled 

 into the country; the imported article being worth 

 $50 pea ton more than the native. Our wild sumac 

 imparts a yellow tinge to the leather, and fails to 

 give it the snow delicacy to which the tannic acid 

 obtained from the Sicilian bleeches it. Dr. Mac- 

 Murtrie, who has published an official report on 

 this matter, states that this difficulty can be ob- 

 viated by gathering the sumac leaves in June 

 if they are required for tanning white or very 

 light leather ; the tannin then present being smaller 

 in quantity, but of purer quality, and the value of 

 the ground leaves being equal to the Sicilian. 



"There is no i-eason," says the Department very 

 justly, "why the ?1, 000,000 in gold paid yearly for 

 foreigu sumac should not be kept at home." The 

 plant grows like a weed ou every stretch of poor 

 ground or mountain range, and it requires but a 

 little culture and skill in harvesting to add it to our 

 profitable lesser crops. It requires to be kept from 

 weeds ; the crop should be gathered the year after 

 planting, by breaking off all the leaves ; after that 

 year in Sicily the tree is either stripped of all leaf- 

 bearing branches and pruned down to straight stalks, 

 or else, which is best, hand picked three times a 

 year. At present the crop of American sumac is 

 reaped almost exclusively by negroes and poor 

 whites, especially in Virginia. About 800 tons are 

 brought annually to the Virginia mills, carelessly 

 gathered and cured, and consequently worth about 

 half the value of the imported. 



This is the Rhus of Botanists, and may be 

 regarded as one of tlie reserved products of 

 our country, which only needs time and ne- 

 cessity to fully devel(;p and bring into general 

 practical use. There are several species of it, 

 from a low stragliug bush to a tree from ten 

 to thirty feet high, namely : the "Staghoru 



