1861. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



531 



■which paid for itself the first clip, not only did 

 that, but paid its expenses by what he sold out of 

 it, and raised 24 lambs besides. Prefers threshed 

 millet to Timothy. No other stock pays so well 

 under his management. Sheep furnish three 

 crops — carcass, wool and lambs. 



Mr. SwiTZER, of Elgin, after considerable ex- 

 perience in different breeds, thinks a cross be- 

 tween the Leicester and Cotswold the best. For 

 protection against dogs he lets them stay with his 

 cattle. Feeds Hungarian and Timothy about 

 half and half. Considers that it is easier to keep 

 eight sheep than one cow. 



Mr. Clark, of Lake. — Our farmer's club think 

 that from four to six sheep are as expensive to 

 keep as one cow. The dogs killed more than the 

 profit. 



Mr. RosENSTlEL, of Stevenson, believes strong- 

 ly in mixed farming. He keeps a daily journal 

 and knows from his own figures, that sheep are 

 easier kept than anything that brings the same 

 income. By careful weights and measures of the 

 feed used, knows that ten sheep can be kept as 

 easy as one cow. Advises keeping a small flock, 

 not of the expensive breeds. Poor farmers are al- 

 most sure to lose if they try keeping fine blooded 

 stock. Has burned his own fingers to the amount 

 of $40,009. This very fine stock is artificially 

 made. Buy some good hearty common sheep 

 and one good blooded buck, and you will soon 

 have a valuable stock. Must have feed raclis. 

 Dogs are the only drawback to profitable wool- 

 growing in this State. 



After a general discussion it seemed to be a 

 universal conclusion that all that prevented sheep- 

 raising being profitable was the devastation by 

 the dogs. 



TRADE PROSPECTS IN" JAPAN". 

 A correspondent of the New York World, 

 •writing from Japan, March 18, says : 



"Some people are never satisfied with the rate 

 at which the world moves, however rapid it may 

 be, and many here grumble at the slow progress 

 of things. But for my part I am rather amazed 

 at what has been done. After more than 200 

 years of exclusion from the rest of the world, (for 

 I do not count the Dutch trade anything) we have 

 now had twenty-one months' trade at Kanagawa. 

 It is believed that fully $7,000,000 worth of the 

 products of this country were exported the last 

 year. So far as I know, the Dutch never carried 

 any silk fi'om Japan ; but 80,000 bales of silk 

 have been exported within a twelve-month, since 

 the ports were opened to the treaty powers. A 

 few days ago a Japanese from a remote province, 

 celebrated for the fineness of its teas, came to 

 this place and solicited aa introduction to some 

 foreign merchant, through an American mission- 

 ary, desiring to make a contract for the sale of 

 teas. He said he could produce 30,000 chests of 

 tea this year, and more the next. Moreover, he 

 desired to sqe the Chinese process of firing the 

 leaf, so as to be able to put it up in a fit condi- 

 tion for immediate transportation to Europe or 

 America. I mention the case to sho^v that the 

 people of this country are beginning to open their 

 eyes to the advantages of foreign commerce, and 

 how the trade in teas, and silks, and other staple 

 articles, will increase as time advances. To any 



but an impatient, unreasonable man, the extent 

 of the foreign trade hitherto, is certainly as great 

 as could have been expected. 



I hape had some experience in China, and when 

 I compare the liberty which foreigners enjoyed at 

 Canton, in 1839, with that we have here, in 1861, 

 I must say that the Japanese treat us with far 

 more liberality than the Chinese did, and the ac- 

 companiments of a residence in this country two 

 years or less, from the time the treaties went into 

 effect,_are much more agreeable than they were 

 in China, after two hundred years of commercial 

 intercourse with that country." 



BELATIONS OF THE VEGETABLE AND 

 ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



There is a ceaseless round of force mutation 

 throughout nature, each one generating or chan- 

 ging into the other. So that force which enters 

 the plant as heat and light, &c., is stored up in 

 its tissues, making them organic. This force, 

 transferred from the plant to the animal in diges- 

 tion, is given out by its muscles in their decom- 

 position, and produces motion, or by its nerves, 

 and constitutes nervous force — force stored up in 

 the body — resistance to chemical affinity ; this 

 force produces directly from the solar rays. The 

 solar rays cause those operations in the vegetable 

 world, by which trees and plants absorb the car- 

 bonic acid gas which is expired from the lungs 

 of animals, and by which those very plants also 

 inhale pure oxygen gas during light, to revive 

 the contaminated atmosphere and supply the lungs 

 of man with the breadth of life. Trees and plants 

 are essential to the health of the animal creation, 

 and there is a mutual relationship between the 

 two kingdoms. Respecting these beautiful and 

 mysterious operations of nature, a distinguished 

 writer has given the following literary gem : 



The carbonic acid gas with which our breathing 

 fills the air, to-morrow will be speeding north 

 and south, striving to make the tour of the world. 

 The date trees that grow round the fountains of 

 the Nile will drink it in by their leaves ; the ce- 

 dar of Lebanan will take of it to add to its stat- 

 ure ; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow riper on 

 it ; and the palms and bananas of Japan change 

 it into flowers. The oxygen we are breathing 

 was distilled for us a short time ago by the mag- 

 nolias of the Susquehana, and tlie great trees that 

 skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon ; the giant 

 rhododendrons of the Himalayas contribute to it, 

 the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon 

 trees of Ceylon, and forests older than the Flood, 

 buried deep in the heart of Africa, far behind the 

 Mountains of the Moon. The rain which we see 

 descending was thawed for us out of icebergs 

 which have watched the polar star for ages, and 

 lotus-lilies sucked up from the Nile, and exhaled 

 as vapor, the snows that are lying at the top of 

 our hills. Thus we see that the two great king- 

 doms of nature are made to co-operate in the ex- 

 ecution of the same design, each ministering to 

 the other, and preserving that due balance in the 

 constitution of the atmosphere which adapts it to 

 the welfare and activity of every order of things, 

 and which would soon be destroyed v/ere the op- 

 erations of any one of them to be suspended. 

 And yet man, in his ignorance and his thirst for 

 worldly gain, has done his utmost to destroy this 



