U2 



NEW ENGLA>n) FARMER. 



July 



BEFORE AND AFTER DRAINING. 

 The following statement was made by one of 

 the successful competitors for premiums offered 

 on corn crops by the Hillsborough, N. H., Agri- 

 cultural Society. The ten bushels of corn raised 

 on an acre of this land when so wet and soft at 

 the time of the third hoeing that it wouldn't stay 

 hilled up, probably cost more labor than the sev- 

 enty-seven bushels raised after drainage, for 

 which the premium was awarded. 



The land on which I raised this corn is in the 

 easterly part of Hillsborough, a hard-wood soil, 

 naturally wet and springy. My father raised corn 

 on a part of the same land some eighty years ago. 

 When I was a boy he used to tell me about hav- 

 ing corn on that land one rather wet season, and 

 at the third time hoeing he tried to hill it up, as 

 the fashion was then, but the land was so wet and 

 soft that it would spread, and become level again. 

 The result was, in the fall he got about ten bush- 

 els of corn to the acre. When 1 was young I 

 used to raise corn on the piece, and in a dry warm 

 season I could raise tolerable good corn, but in 

 wet cold seasons I could get but little. It was so 

 •wet and rocky, both, that for the last five-and- 

 twenty years, I had abandoned it, and thought I 

 would never plow it again ; but four years ago I 

 had occasion to take some stone off from it to 

 fence a road ; and the surplus ones I drew off 

 into piles ; then I constructed several under- 

 drains through the piece, and thought I would try 

 it again for plowing. Last year it was about half 

 of it planted with corn and manured some ; the 

 other part was planted with potatoes, without ma- 

 nure. This year I spread on the acre about thir- 

 ty cartloads of manure from the barn cellar, of 

 thirty bushels each, and plowed it twice, just as I 

 could, it being so rocky that I could plow no reg- 

 ular depth. I then furrowed it, light as I could 

 conveniently, about three feet and four inches 

 apart, and manured it in the hill with a compost 

 made of meadow mud and Peruvian guano, about 

 one pound of guano to a bushel of mud — put half 

 a shovel full in a hill, and the hills about two and 

 a half feet apart. I hoed it three times, and kept 

 it clear of weeds. The result was on the acre I 

 had of corn No. 1, seventy-one and a half bush- 

 els ; No. 2, five and a half bushels, of eighty 

 pounds to the bushel. It was hai-vested the tenth 

 of October. Hiram Munroe. 



BONE DUST FOR BEANS. 

 Probably there is no manure that can be ap- 

 plied to the bean crop more decidedly beneficial 

 in its effects, than bone dust. Wherever it has 

 been tested, it has given satisfaction, and espe- 

 cially where the soil has been of a sandy texture, 

 and but poorly supplied with lime. The accounts 

 •which some years since were transmitted to us 

 from England, in relation to its efficiency, were 

 regarded by many as doubtful: yet we have as- 

 surance that of all manurial agents, so far as the 

 development of the bean crop is involved, bone 

 manure is unquestionably the best. We advise 

 those who can obtain it conveniently, to procure a 



small quantity, apply it, and test its virtues for 

 themselves. A trifling dressing of a crop at hoe- 

 ing time, will frequently advance it entirely be- 

 yond the cost of the application. 



A SLAVE AUCTION DESCRIBED BY RUS- 

 SELL. 



It appears from Mr. Russell's latest received 

 letters, that while he was sojourning at the capi- 

 tal of the Southern Confederacy, he thought it 

 would be instructive to attend for the first time a 

 slave auction. What he saw and felt is thus viv- 

 idly described : 



"The crowd was small. Three or four idle 

 men, in rough, homespun, make shift uniforms, 

 leant against the irons, enclosing a small pond of 

 foul green-looking water, surrounded by a brick 

 work which decorates the space in front of the Ex- 

 change Hotel. The speaker stood on an empty 

 deal packing-case. A man in a cart was listening, 

 with a lack-lustre eye, to the address. Some 

 three or four others, in a sort of vehicle which 

 might either be a hearse or a piano van, had also 

 drawn up for the benefit of the address. Five 

 or six men in long black coats and high hats, 

 some whittling sticks, and chewing tobacco, and 

 discharging streams of discolored saliva, com- 

 pleted the group. 'Nine hundred and fifty dol- 

 lars. Only nine hundred and fifty dollars offered 

 for him,' exclaimed the man in the tone of in- 

 jured dignity, remonstrance and surprise, which 

 can be insinuated by all true auctioneers into the 

 dryest, numerical statements. 'Will no one make 

 any advance on nine hundred and fifty dollars ?' 

 A man near me opened his mouth, spat, and said, 

 'Twenty-five.' 'Only nine hundred and seventy- 

 five dollars offered for him. Why, that's ridicu- 

 lous ; only nine hundred and seventy-five dollars. 

 Will no one,' &c. 



Beside the orator-auctioneer stood a stout young 

 man of five-and-twenty years of age, with a bun- 

 dle in his hand. He was a muscular fellow, 

 broad-shouldered, narrow-flanked, but rather small 

 in stature ; he had on a broad, greasy, old wide- 

 awake, a blue jacket, a coarse cotton shirt, loose 

 and rather ragged trousers and broken shoes. 

 The expression of his face was heavy and sad, but 

 it was by no means disagreeable, in spite of his 

 thick lips, broad nostrils and high cheek bones. 

 On his head was wool instead of hair ; his whisk- 

 ers were little flacculent, black tufts, and his skin 

 was as dark as that of the late Mr. Dyce Sombre 

 or of Sir Jung Bahadoor himself. I am neither 

 sentimentalist, nor Black Republican, nor negro- 

 worshipper, but I confess the sight caused a 

 strange thrill through my heart. I tried in vain 

 to make myself familiar with the fact that I could, 

 for the sum of nine hundred and seventy-five dol- 

 lars become as absolutely the owner of that mass 

 of blood, bones, sinews, flesh and brains, as of 

 the horse which stood by my side. I have seen 

 slave markets in the East, but, somehow or oth- 

 er, the Orientalism of the scene cast a coloring 

 over the nature of the sales there which deprived 

 them of the disagreeable harshness and matter- 

 of-fact character of the transaction before. For 

 the Turk, or Smyrniote, or Egyptian, to buy and 

 sell slaves seemed rather suited to the eternal fit- 



