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mal so fed falls away the second season. Mr. P. is opposed to their 

 use for ewes for the same reason. 



For fattening wethers I know well their value. Gayton Williams 

 of Heath, Franklin Co. is accustomed to boil them and give them 

 freely to his wethers, and ewes which are coming forward with ear- 

 ly lambs. May not the cooking of them correct the injurious quali- 

 ties attributed to them by Mr. Plunkett, when given raw ? For fat- 

 tening oxen in Deerfield, Franklin Co., five bushels of raw potatoes 

 are deemed equal to one bushel of corn. In my own experience 

 the advantages from the boiling of potatoes for fattening cattle are not 

 an equivalent for the expense and trouble. In a very exact trial 

 made in this matter in France, the advantages in fattening sheep of 

 cooked over uncooked potatoes were only as 13 to 12. This dif- 

 ference will scarcely pay the expense. Potatoes are a crop so well 

 known among us, that little need be said as to the mode of cultiva- 

 tion. If a large crop is desired, my opinion is that they should be 

 planted in drills ; the rows being about two and a half feet or three 

 apart, and the sets placed not less than a foot apart in the rows. 

 They may then be mainly cultivated with the plough. They should 

 not be planted deeply ; and they should be kept clean. In general 

 (ew plants are cultivated in a more slovenly manner. Under good 

 cultivation, few crops afford more valuable feed to an acre. They 

 are, I believe, however an exhausting and not an ameliorating crop. 

 They return little to the soil ; and the almost universal experience is 

 that wheat does by no means so well after potatoes as after Indian 

 corn. They are in general so much neglected in the cultivation that 

 the ground becomes surcharged with weeds. 



2. Carrots. Jeremiah Valet, late of Stockbridge, but now an 

 emigrant to the fertile west, a irue philosopher in a homely garb, a 

 pure diamond though never in the hands of the lapidary, (I would 

 not say this if he were not out of the reach of my voice,) was much 

 in the habit of raising carrots ; and gave a preference to them over 

 every other vegetable for fattening swine and cattle. This was the 

 result of repeated trials and long experience. To fatting swine he 

 gives them boiled ; to store hogs, raw. His crops average SOO 

 bushels to the acre. 



Jno. Merrill of South Lee, has been a very successful cultivator 



