1862. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



175 



ion be good policy ? There is no way to make so 

 much grass with so little manure as the following : 

 Plow up worn-out grass land as soon as may be 

 after the summer drought has past ; pulverize 

 well ; manure sparingly ; sow two or three sorts 

 of seeds, and give it a shallow covering ; thus the 

 little manure, neither too deep nor too shallow, 

 does all it can do, and no crop is lost. 

 Elliot, Me., Feb. 1, 1862. A. Allen. 



KEEP THE BACK COVERED. 

 One prevalent way of taking cold, is from ex- 

 posure of the upper portion of the back while in 

 bed. We divest ourselves of the warm clothing 

 we have worn during the day, put on a thin night- 

 dress, go to sleep, and perhaps awake in the night 

 feeling as if an iceberg lay between our shoulders. 

 This is particularly the case when two persons oc- 

 cupy the same bed — each one facing outward, the 

 bed" clothes are drawn from the backs so as to ex- 

 pose the lower part of the neck and between the 

 shoulders to the cold air of the room, the lungs 

 being so near that part of the body as to be sensi- 

 bly afl'ected by its exposure. We think a great 

 many severe colds are taken in this way that can- 

 not otherwise be accounted for. 



OATS FOR SHEEP — TO CURE A CALF THAT SCOURS 

 — DWARF BROOM CORN, ETC. 

 2. Will you, or some of your reader, inform 

 me how many oats it will do to feed to ewe sheep 

 at a time, and if they will hurt them ? 



2. What will cure a calf that scours ? 



3. If any subscriber of the Farmer purchased 

 the Dwarf Broom Corn Seed advertised the last 

 spring, will they please give the results of their 

 sowing ? 



4. Please tell me the size of the "Farmers' En- 

 cyclopedia," and the number of pages it contains ? 



Canterhurij, N. II., 1862. s. E. 



REJLiRKS. — 1. A pint of sweet oats per day to 

 a sheep will be excellent for it. 



2. "Scours," or diarrhoea, is not always a disease, 

 but an effort of nature to get rid of that which 

 would be injurious, and, therefore, a mild purgative 

 of castor oil, or something else, is good. This may 

 be followed with two or three messes of warm 

 flour gruel, at the same time not allowing the calf 

 to take much milk from the cow. 



4. The Farmers' and Planters' Encylopedia 

 contains 1179 pages, royal octavo size. 



SEED CORN. 



We cannot give the name of our correspondent 

 who wrote over the initials "E. R.," upon the sub- 

 ject of seed corn. We have many inquiries of this 

 kind. It would be more pleasant and profitable, 

 if correspondents would give their full address 

 when communicating to us. 



"C. T. F.," North Bridgewater, Mass., is in- 

 formed that we know nothing of the expedition to 

 go into the "wool business" at the West, beyond 

 what M'as published in the Farmer to which he 

 refers. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 EXPERIMENTS "WITH CORN. 



I saw a statement by Mr. Henry II. Peters, of 

 Southboro', Mass., in relation to corn, in the Far- 

 mer of January IS, I think. I have a kind of com 

 that is hard to beat, as to the amount of shelled 

 corn that a basket of ears will make. A few days 

 since I shelled some for bread meal, and selected 

 the best ears, as I usually do. I measured and 

 weighed : First I weighed out 70 pounds, which I 

 sup])osed would make 1 bushel of shelled corn ; I 

 shelled it carefully, measured up a bushel, and it 

 weighed 60 pounds ; then weighed the rest which 

 M'as left, it being 6 ounces. The cobs weighed 

 9 10-16 pounds. The above I took from a bin on 

 the east side of my corn house. I then took a 

 basket full from the bin on the west side, so I 

 picked out a bushel basket of ears which weighed 

 50.^ pounds ; I shelled it carefully as I did the oth- 

 er ; the corn I measured in sealed measiu'es, and 

 the amount was 23^ quarts, which weighed 44 

 pounds. The cobs weighed 6^ pounds, Avhich is at 

 the rate of about 8| pounds of cobs to 60 pounds 

 of shelled corn. 



As to the kind of corn, I know of no particular 

 name for it : it is eight-rowed, yellow, rather small 

 in size, but the ears are good and fair length. 



For years past I have seen much in the Farmer 

 about corn being diminished in weight by being 

 cut up and stooked before it is quite ripe, or hard. 

 I cut and stook my corn as soon as it gets fairly 

 glazed over, and when many of the small ears are 

 in the milk. I think it does not injure the com, 

 but is a great saving of labor, and there is much 

 in favor in benefiting the fodder, as, if corn is cut 

 and stooked in the right time, and in the right 

 manner, there is a great advantage over the old- 

 fashioned way of cutting the top stalks and letting 

 the corn remain in the field until husking-time. 



I have shelled a bushel of corn from cobs that 

 weighed less than 8 pounds. 



A GOOD HEIFER. 



Mr. AVm. Hooper, of this town, butchered a 

 heifer 21 months and 10 days old, which weighed 

 622 pounds. H. Allbe. 



Walpole, N. H., Feb., 1862. 



Continental Money. — Mr. Lossing, in his 

 Field Book of the Revolution, gives a scale of the 

 depreciation of the Continental money. In Jan- 

 uary, 1777, the paper currency was at five per 

 cent, discount. In July it was at twenty-five per 

 cent, discount, and before the end of the year 

 three dollars in paper would not command a silver 

 dollar. In 1778 the paper currency continued to 

 depreciate, so that in April four dollars in paper 

 Avere equal to one in coin. In September the ra- 

 tio was as five to one, and at the close of the year 

 was six and a half to one. In 1779 the deprecia- 

 tion rapidly continued. In February the ratio 

 was eight dollars and a half of paper to one of 

 silver, in May it was twelve to one, in September 

 eighteen to one, and before the close of the year 

 a paper dollar was only worth four cents. In 

 March, 1780, a paper dollar was worth three cents, 

 in May it was worth two cents, and in December 

 seventy-four dollars in paper was worth one dollar 

 in silver. At this point the historian stops. 



