12 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[January, 



eeived ahd some favorable comments made thereon. 

 After the reading of several selections and some dis- 

 cussion on the question of a duty on foreign fertili- 

 zers, the club adjourned to meet at the residance of 

 Josiah Brown, at the regular time next month. 



POULTRY ASSOCIATION. 



The Lancaster Country Poultry Society met 

 statedly Monday morning, .Fan. 1, 18-^3, with the 

 following members present : Geo. A-Geyer, Florin ; 

 J. B. Long, city; G. H. Witmer, Neffsville ; J. B. 

 Lichty, city ; F. U. Ditfendeiffer, city ; C. A. Gast, 

 city ; J. A. Stober, Schoeneck ; J. L. Bruner, Mount 

 Joy; H. S. Garber, Mount Joy ; Chas. Lippold, city; 

 J. E. Sebum, city; T. Frank Evans, Lititz ; John 

 Seldomridge, Epbrata ; J. h. Trissler, city; J. M. 

 Johnston, city; D. M. Brosey, Manheim. 



The minutes of the previous meeting were read 

 and approved. 



T. Frank Evans, the former treasurer, made a 

 report, which was accepted. 



J. B. Markley, city, was nominated and elected to 

 membership in the society. 



Mr. Schum moved that any person attempting to 

 influence the judge at the next show, be excluded 

 from competition in any of the prizes. The motion 

 was unanimously adopted. 



Mr. Long said that in order to aid the judges, he 

 would move that a committee be appointed to weigh 

 all the fowls. 



-Mr. Evans .seconded the motion and suggested 

 that the persons appointed be not allowed to weigh 

 their own birds. The motion was adopted and 

 Messrs. John E. Sclmra, Charles Lippold and J. L. 

 Bruner were appointed. 



Mr. Long moved that the members of the society 

 relinquish all claims to premiums un 11 after the 

 foreign exhibitors had been paid. Carried. 



J. B. Long declined to be a candidate for presi- 

 dent, and J. A. Stober declined being a candidate for 

 the executive committee. 



Mr. Lichty stated that inasmuch as the indica- 

 tions pointed to a largershow than thesociety had ever 

 held before, he had made arrangements to partition 

 off about one half of the barroom for the use of the 

 society. 



On motion the executive committee was instrncted 

 to make the arrangements necessary. 



On motion, Mr. William Schoenberger was 

 elected doorkeeper for the show. 



It being determined to sell birds at the show by 

 auction. It was resolved that 10 per cent, of the 

 amount lealized go into the treasury of the society. 



Adjourned. 



AGRICULTURE. 



Classification of Soil. 



Prof. Johnson classifies soils, according to their 

 clayey or sandy proportions, thus : 



First. Pure claj from which no sand can be 

 washed. 



Second. Strong clay or brick clay, which con- 

 tains from five to twenty per cent of sand. 



Third. Clay loam, which contains from twenty to 

 forty per cent, of tand. 



Fourth. Loam, which has from forty to seventy 

 per cent of sand. 



Fifth. Sandy loam, which has from seventy to 

 nine'ty per cent, of sand. 



Sixth. Light sand, which has less than ten per 

 cent, of clay. 



Sandy soils, then, are those which consist mainly 

 of grains of sand, or silica, or flint, and is cdlled a 

 silicious soil. Nature never bestowed upon man a 

 soil of greater capability of being made lastingly 

 fertile than the sandy light soil of New England. 



Gravelly soils need no description, though there 

 are rich gravels and poor gravels, depending upon 

 the rocks of which they are composed, and the snb- 

 stances which are mixed among them. Clay soils 

 consist largely of alumina ; that is, having such an 



abundance of clay that it is called the "ciay metal." 

 Clay itself is a compound of silica (sand), acid, 

 alumina, and water. It also contains potash, soda, 

 and lime. It forms a compact, fatty earth, soft to 

 the touch, sticky in a moist state and very hard 

 when dry. 



Chalky soils have been formed from rocks in 

 which lime was abundant. 



Peaty soils need no description, although they 

 differ very widely. 



Alluvial soils are formed by deposits of sand, 

 loam, and grivel brought down by rivers. They are 

 often very rich, being composed of a multitude of 

 thin layers of mud, in which all sorts of fertilizing 

 material is mixed. Loamy soils contain a large por- 

 tion of decayed matter, humus or muck, as it is 

 called. Woody fibre in a state of decay acquires a 

 dark color, and ultimately becomes mould. Loam 

 contains a variety of ingredients, as clay, sand, lime, 

 in addition to htrtnus. It is a loose, friable descrip- 

 tion of soil, easy to cultivate, and as a texture, is the 

 most desirable description of land for purposes of 

 tillage. 



Seeding to Clover. 



James Clizbe, of Quincy, Mich., gives his opinion 

 as follows in The Fanner and Mmitifatturer in re- 

 gal d to seeding land with clover. As Mr. Clizbe is 

 perfectly at home in this matter his views will be 

 read with interest by the farmers in the West. He 

 says : 



I have been farming for 43 years, and will tell my 

 experience in securing a good field of clover every 

 time. If I want to seed down a field of wheat, I wait 

 until the ground is settled in the spring and the 

 hard frosts have passed, then I sow six quarts of 

 clover seed and four quarts of timothy well mixed. 

 I follow by harrowing it in and then roll the ground. 

 Then I sow 100 pounds of plaster to the acre. If I 

 seed with oats I sow the same amount of seed, but 

 after the seed oats are dragged in» I omit the drag 

 ging after the clover seed is sown, but immediately 

 put on the roller, which is beneficial to both oats and 

 clover. I then eow heavily of plaster — on light soil 

 150 pounds per acre is not too much. The plaster 

 helps the oats on dry laud five times its cost, and is 

 what saves clover in dry weather. I sow my seed 

 mixed, so that if the clover does kill out, the 

 timothy will take its place. To get a good catch 

 on sandy land that is badly run, I have observed the 

 above rules and always get a splendid stand of 

 clover. 



Big Farms. 



Daniel Murphy, of San Jose. Cal., who recently 

 died at Halleck, Nevada, is said to have beeu the 

 largest laud owner in the world. He was a native 

 of Quebec, and went to California in 186t. At the 

 time of his death he owned 200,000 acres in Nevada, 

 6,000,000 in the state of Durango, Mexico, and large 

 tracts in -Arizona and Californio, all of which were 

 devoted to the cattle business. Only a few weeks 

 ago, with another man, be purchased the great Don 

 Juan Foster ranche, paying therefore 81.50,000, and 

 he had almost completed the arrangements to buy 

 the entire vast cattle interests of William Dumphy, 

 of San Francisco. lie was the discoverer of Lake 

 Tahoe, and only 50 years o\<i.—Exchaa(je 



We think the policy which allows any one man to 

 hold such an enormous amount of land as this a 

 very wrong one. Of course a share of it is undoubt- 

 edly useless except for grazing purposes ; but never- 

 theless we do not believe in auy one man's control- 

 ling such an amount. He cannot possibly utilize it, 

 and in whatever section it may be situated it will be 

 a great drawback to other settlers. While the ordi- 

 nary farmer, with his few hundred acres, not only 

 improves its fertility and adds to its value, he at the 

 same time adds to the value of the property of his 

 neighbors. But the big farmer monopolizes a large 

 piece of land, neglects a greater portion of it, and 

 actually decreases the value of the small farms in 

 his vicinity. The laud, in place of supporting a 

 thousand or so of families, gives a home to perhaps 



a hundred men, who have degenerated so that they 

 have lost all enterprise, and spend their days in 

 watching a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle The 

 small farmer is the man who brings up the average 

 of a State in production, and adds tc its value per 

 acre. He is the man who will aid in the develop- 

 ment of a section, not retard it. Big farms have 

 been a curse to California and other Western states, 

 and the sooner they are cut up and divieed among 

 farmers who will improve them, the better it will 

 he for the country. The government should have a 

 limit beyond which one man cannot pui chase wild 

 land. Make that limit, whatever it is, large en- 

 ough to give every chance for enterprise to develop 

 itself, and refuse to sell another acre. It is contrary 

 to the spirit of the Republic to allow anyone man 

 to monopolize a quarter or half a State. News- 

 papers are- eternally bragging about the bie farm of 

 this or that man, but we cannot see any thing to 

 brag over because a man owns a number of thous- 

 ands of acres of land, the greater part of which is 

 useless to himself or the country. Big farms we 

 regard as big frauds on the small farmer, who is 

 really the basis of the prosperity of the country. — 

 Michigan Farmer, Detroit. 



Useful Hints from the Germantown Tele- 

 graph. 



An anonymous article we notice is being reprinted 

 in many of our contemporaries, relative to the value 

 of liquid manure, the way to gather and save it, and 

 the method of hauling it out o%'er the farm. Among 

 the arrangements are the solid built, water tight 

 cistern, the drains leading into it, the drawing-out 

 apparatus, the filling of a large tank upon a drag 

 built especially to carry it out, and the manner of 

 sprinkling it over the land. The expense of all this 

 is not given, nor the value of the application after it 

 is made. But if the one should be, and the latter 

 could be, the folly of the whole business would soon 

 be apparent. Some years ago we gave some statis- 

 tics in regard to liquid manure, „nd predicted for 

 .Mr. Mechi, the nreat farmer of " Triptree Hall " at 

 that time, the very result which followed his exten- 

 sive and expensive experiments with this description 

 of fertilizer. In fact, these experiments, with others 

 equally wild and ruinous, caused his bankruptcy, 

 having squandered a 'arge estate upon his steam- 

 plowing, subsoil plowing, liquid manuring with va- 

 rious products, costly live stock, &c. 



Liquid manure from a baruyard, used upon a 

 garden close at hand, where it might be applied on 

 vegetable beds at a very little expense, would give 

 good results ; but we are clearly of the opinion, for; 

 tified by extensive experiments, jjarticularly of 

 wealthy English farmers, as we have already re- 

 ferred to, that it would prove a leak to the purse 

 that nothing except its abandonment wonld ever 

 close up. 



HORT2CL TURE. 



Buy Small Trees. 



The average American is In a great hurry to 

 realize on his investments. If he orders a few gar- 

 den seeds in January, he is anxious to have them 

 sent imnudiately ; and if he forwards six cents for a 

 copy of some paper which contains a story of which 

 he has read or heard he does not forget to request 

 the publisher to send it "by return mail." Patience, 

 which takes the place of quiet waiting, is a virtue of 

 which he seems to be totally ignorant. He cannot 

 wait the progress of events, but must constantly 

 hurry and fret in order to make nature move a little 

 faster thau her wonted pace. 



This tendency . crops out very plainly when he 

 purchases trees. He finds them described in the 

 catalogue as " second-class," " medium," " first- 

 class," and "extra." The difference in these 

 classes is principally, if not wholly, in the size and 

 height of the trees. The larger the tree the higher 

 the price; but the farmer "don't care anythln^j 

 about that." He wants good trees or none, anl 



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