1861. 



NEW ENGLAXD FARMER. 



113 



BUCKTHOEW" FOB, HEDGES. 



The inquiry is occasionally made, "What is 

 the best plant for hedges, taking into account 

 hardiness, rapidity of growth and beauty ?" Sev- 

 eral plants, such as hemlock, arbor vita?, three 

 thorned acacia, osage orange, native crab apple, 

 and others are employed. 



If the hedge is designed to fence against cattle, 

 some of the hedges with sharp stiff thorns are 

 best, but if to ba used as boundaries or objects of 

 beauty, we know of nothing that will "set off" the 

 premises and answer the purpose desired so 

 readily as buckthorn. The cut, which we give 

 above, shows how the plant will spread, and form 

 a low tree when standing alone. When properly 



a sufficient physician for this disease, which he 

 says is caused by accident. When he discovers 

 that the milk is bloody he draws it carefully, but 

 does not save it from the section of the udder af- 

 fected until the milk again presents a healthy ap- 

 pearance, which generally has been but a few 

 milkings. 



cultivated and pruned, it serves an excellent pur- 

 pose as a shelter for the garden, breaking the 

 high winds, somewhat modifying the fierce solar 

 heat in summer, and at the same time tending to 

 keep the grounds moist in dry seasons. 



"The Buckthorn is indigenous to our country, 

 is a bushy plant, growing from ten to fifteen feet 

 high, not very thorny, but having sharp, stiff 

 spurs, or side branches, and is considerably used 

 as a hedge plant in this State. It bears clipping 

 remarkably well, does not suffer from extreme 

 cold, puts on its greenness early in the spring, 

 and is possessed of great vitality, so that it sel- 

 dom suffers from transplanting." A quite full 

 account of the different plants used for hedges 

 may be found in Warders' Hedges and Ever- 

 greens, published in 1858. 



Garget. — A correspondent of the Bural New- 

 TorJcer, who "was brought up from childhood on 

 a farm, has kept a dairy for a living, and is getting 

 somewhat along in years," thinks that Nature is 



For the New England Farmer. 



RETHOSPEOTIVE NOTES. 



Thoughts Suggested by N. E. Farmer, Jax., 1861. 



Feeding Hogs — A Common Mismanagement, 

 and a better Way. — In the brief article on this 

 subject on page 10 of N. E. Farmer, (Monthly,) 

 and in the weekly of Dec. 15, there is an opinion 

 advanced which we think to some extent errone- 

 ous, and likely, also, to mislead or perplex those 

 who cannot separate the truth it contains 

 from the error with which it is mixed up. 

 The statement is this, — that the usual pro- 

 cess of feeding pumpkins, potatoes and 

 other bulky substances to hogs for several 

 weeks before feeding them on corn is inju- 

 rious, because this bulky kind of food tends 

 to enlarge the stomach and digestive or- 

 gans, and thus the hogs are led by the mere 

 force of habit to eat a larger amount of the 

 more nutritious food than the system re- 

 quires, more than can be digested, and more 

 than they would otherwise do. Now there 

 is here a mixture of truth and error, and it 

 is of much practical importance to discrim- 

 inate between them. Those who fail to se- 

 parate the former from the latter will be 

 either perplexed or misled by the foregoing 

 statement ; while those who make the pro- 

 per discrimination may have an important 

 fact or truth more deeply fixed in their 

 minds, and more likely to be remembered 

 and ready for application in their hog-feed- 

 ing processes. 



This much, then, is true about the fore- 

 going statement, viz., that bulky, or I should 

 I rather term it highly diluted, food is quite apt to 

 produce the morbid enlargement of the stomach 

 and digestive organs which is therein alleged. But 

 it is not absolutely necessary and unavoidable that 

 boiled pumpkins and potatoes must be so bulky 

 as to be liable to this objection. It is the addi- 

 tion of too much water or slop or thin milk which 

 makes even this kind of food injurious. In order 

 to get enough of real nutriment to satisfy the 

 craving of hunger, hogs fed on highly-diluted 

 food — whether the food so over-diluted be boiled 

 pumpkins and potatoes, or boiled meal, or raw 

 meal, or bran, or anything else — are obliged to 

 swallow a much larger quantity than they would 

 need to do, or would do, if the quality were rich- 

 er, more nutritious, or less diluted. This over- 

 thinning of swill or food for hogs is not confined 

 to the single case of potatoes and pumpkins, but 

 may be met with, by the help of an observing pair 

 of eyes, in the swill and the swill-barrels of a 

 great many who do not understand very well the 

 business of hog-fatting and pork-making, simple 

 and easy as that business may seem. 



But, notwithstanding that we believe there 

 are a good many who do not understand this ap- 

 parently simple and easy task, and notwithstand- 



