14 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



and are equal, if not better, to a peck of carrots. 

 There are in 100 pounds of carrots, 10 pounds of 

 nutritious matter and 90 pounds of water ; in 100 

 pounds of apples, 16 pounds of nutritious matter 

 and 84 pounds of water ; in the sweet apple there 

 would be double the quantity. Now as apples are 

 plenty this season, and it is impossible for many 

 farmers to get barrels to put them into, let them 

 give them to their stock, especially cows, and they 

 will find it is better to use them so, than make 

 them into cider, or sell them at the present low 

 prices. When we consider the little trouble in 

 raising the apple compared to the carrot, and the 

 preference the cattle give to the apple, its soft, 

 pulpy nature compared to the hard carrot, being 

 easier of digestion, and a more healthy article of 

 food in proper quantities, I think we shall decide 

 in favor of the apple, and use them more than we 

 have done for the feeding of stock. w. 



Dover, N. H., Nov. 5, 1860. 



For the Neio England Farmer. 

 HARDENING UJSTHIPB CORN". 



Mr. Editor : — I find, from some experiments 

 made this fall, that corn that fails to ripen in the 

 field, by reason of early frosts, may be hardened 

 so as to be ground into good meal (even if it is 

 not seared at all when gathered,) by being im- 

 mersed in water at boiling heat, kept under four 

 or five minutes, and afterwards dried in the sun- 

 shine, or elsewhere. 



Corn treated in this way becomes as yellow as 

 that ripened in the field, and there need be, I 

 think, but little fear of its moulding while dry- 

 ing. 



The above may not be new to the readers of 

 the Farmer although it is to me ; neither might 

 it be a paying process, for all corn-raisers ; but 

 there may be times and places when and where 

 it will pay to try it ; and for those I make it pub- 

 lic. JoHX Calvin Gitchell. 



Boscmcen, N. H., Nov., 1860. 



Power of a Bird's Song. — When we hear 

 the song of a soaring lark Ave may be sure that 

 the entire atmosphere between us and the bird is 

 filled with pulses, or undulations, or waves, as 

 they are often called, produced by the little song- 

 ster's organ of voice. This organ is a vibrating in- 

 strument, resembling, in principle, the reed of a 

 clarionet. Let us suppose we hear the song of a 

 lark, elevated to a height of 500 feet in the air. 

 Before this is possible the bird must have agitat- 

 ed a sphere of air 1000 feet in diameter ; that is to 

 say, it must have communicated to 17,888 tons of 

 air a motion sufficiently intense to be appreciated 

 by our organs of hearing. — TyndaU's Glaciers of 

 the Alps. 



Cincinnati Vineyards. — Dr. S. Mosher states 

 in the Ohio Valley Farmer, that he has visited 

 some dozen or more vineyards in the vicinity of 

 Cincinnati, on both sides of the river, and found 

 all that he visited more or less affected with that 

 most fatal malady of the Catawba grape, the rot 

 —having destroyed by its ravages, varying from 

 one-fourth to three-fourths of the crop. 



SIXTY-FOUR BUSHELS OF "WHEAT TO 

 THE ACRE. 



The Baltimore American Farmer publishes the 

 statement of Mr. M. T. Goldsborough, of Ellen- 

 boro', near Easton, Md., of a crop of wheat raised 

 the past season, on the farm of his late father, 

 Col. N. Goldsborough, by which it appears that 

 27^ acres produced at the rate of a mere fraction 

 less than o5 bushels per acre, allowing GO pounds 

 to the bushel ; the best 9 acres of which produced 

 at the rate of 64.} bushels per acre. We copy a 

 few paragraphs from the statement : 



The field upon which this crop grew had, like 

 the other proportions of the farm, been subject to 

 the three field rotations of corn, wheat and clover, 

 for a great number of years. It had been the 

 practice for years on this, as on many other well- 

 cultivated farms in this country, to dress the en- 

 tire corn cultivation with some improving materi- 

 al. My father used unrotted farm-yard manure, 

 marsh mud, woods mould, Lidian oyster-shell de- 

 posit, marl, or lime variously applied. He never 

 used the marl or lime extensively, but obtained 

 almost all of the calcareous manure which he ap- 

 plied from the Indian oyster-shell banks, and this 

 he at one time applied very heavily upon land not 

 shelled by the aborigines. 



It was, in its due course, manured and planted 

 in corn in 1856, and in the fall the ground was 

 harrowed, rolled, drilled in wheat without guano, 

 and set in clover in the following spring. The 

 crop reaped from it in 1857, (a bad wheat year,) 

 was about twenty bushels, per acre. I mention 

 this to show the capability of the soil under such 

 circumstances. 



In the spring of 1858, the clover was filled with 

 that terrible pest, "Pigeon weed," or "Red root," 

 which now fatally chokes out wheat on many fine 

 farms in this country, and I attempted to prevent 

 it from seeding by stocking the field heavily, 

 about the last of April, with horses, cattle, sheep 

 and hogs, but the season being very genial for 

 grass, the weed was left untouched, and therefore, 

 to prevent its seed from ripening, I put in a large 

 force of plows in the latter part of May, and broke 

 the field about six inches deep. 



Stock continued to trample over the plowed 

 surface until after harvest, and as the plowing 

 was at so early a period, it was of course necessa- 

 ry to harrow and roll it a great many times, (I do 

 not know how often, as I do not reside on the 

 farm, and no journal was kept,) to keep the grass 

 and weeds under. It was 7ioi ijlowed a second 

 time, and when it was drilled, there was nothing 

 like a clod to be seen on the surface, and there 

 was only loose earth enough, and in the condition 

 of powder, to allow the drill to cover the wheat 

 eS"ectually, the earth beneath the wheat having 

 become very fii-mly packed by the action of rain, 

 the trampling of stock, and the effect of imple- 

 ments, in the four months that intervened be- 

 tween the plowing and drilling. 



It was drilled with an old Pierson drill nine 

 inches wide between the tubes, on the 4th, 6th 

 and 7th of October, the wheat being deposited 

 about one inch below the surface of the soil in the 

 bottoms of the drill furrows. 



The seed wheat drilled was thirty bushels — the 



