1864. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



123 



would be h&rd to demonstrate. 



The writer of this article has had some experi- 

 ence for the last thirty years on the subject in 

 question, and has arrived at one conclusion, dem- 

 onstrated by facts, which actually occur ; it is this : 

 let there be any given amount of land prepared in 

 the spring of the year, say for oats, sow one-half 

 to oats and the other half to rye, or any part to 

 oats and the other to rye, only let them be right 

 side by side ; the land shall be prepared just alike, 

 exactly, and seeded alike, exactly, to grass, and 

 there will be at least one-half more grass in the 

 land sown to rye than on the land sown to oats. 

 The land where the rye is will be completely cov- 

 ered like a mat; and where the oats are, extremely 

 spare ; we never knew it to fail, and have often 

 tried it, having had occasion to sow spring rye in 

 that way, to save the unnecessary expense of 

 breaking up land elsewhere. Now this proves, 

 1, that grass will grow well when it is shaded 

 some ; 2, that it may be shaded too much, (unless 

 there is some other way to account for the non- 

 appearance of the grass among the oats other than 

 the great amount of loam, which everybody says 

 is the cause.) But it does not prove, in the third 

 place, but what the grass would have grown just 

 as well as if it had not been shaded any. But 

 the question cannot, we think, be fairly answered 

 without being thoroughly experimented upon. It 

 is possible that grass might be made to grow bet- 

 ter sown by itself entirely, and yet taking into 

 consideration the extra cost, it might not pay, and 

 would be better to sow grain with it. So that, as 

 we said before, we shall take the medium course 

 and continue to sow grass seed with some kind of 

 grain, until some further developments appear. 

 And hoping that some able pen may discuss this 

 subject more at length, I close. J. F. 



Uxbndge, Jan. 19, 1864. 



*See compendium of the "Impending Crisis of the South," 

 page 29—35, 

 fSee New England Farmer, last vol., No. 46. 



For the New England Farmer. 



WHAT ELSE SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN 

 THE SCHOOLS P 



Every farmer must, of necessity, be more or 

 less of a mechanic. He has to raise heavy weights ; 

 he should know what a lever is, and how power is 

 gained by it. He has to weigh, and does not want 

 to cheat or be cheated. He ought to know how 

 scales and steelyards are constructed, and on what 



Erinciple. He has to make roads, and to drive 

 eavy loads uphill and down. He ought to know 

 the principles of the inclined plane. Sixty years 

 ago there was a mania for turnpikes. Straight 

 roads were made from Boston to Newburyport, — 

 from Boston to Worcester, — from Boston to Con- 

 cord, — and various roads connecting other places. 

 These roads, often made at great expense, went, not 

 unfrequently, directly over considerable hills, when 

 a nearly level road might have been made, at far 

 less expense, by a trifling departure from a straight 

 line. There are several remarkable instances of 

 this mistake, to be seen on the three turnpikes I 

 have named, within ten miles of Boston. Even 

 at the present day, with vastly increased inter- 

 course, the. hilly parts of these roads are very lit- 

 tle used. No loaded wagon, and few heavily la- 

 den vehicles of any kind, go over these hills, ex- 

 cept in cases of absolute necessity. 



If the simple fact had been known, that, to con- 

 vey a load to the top of a hill, the whole weight 

 must be actually lifted perpendicularly, to a height 

 equal to the perpendicular height of the hill, and 

 made to surmount, in addition, all the inequalities 

 of the road, the greater part of all this useless 

 expense would have been saved. Now, no more 

 instruction is given upon the principles of the 

 inclined plane, in the common schools, — the only 

 schools to which the boys of the greater part of 

 the State have access, — than was given sixty years 

 ago. 



Every farmer has frequent occasion to use ropes, 

 and, not seldom, tackles ; he ought, therefore, to 

 be acquainted with the principles of the rope ma- 

 chine, the toggle joint and the pulley ; and they 

 ought to be taught in the common schools. 



Every farmer ought to understand enough of 

 machinery to see into the working of a grist mill, 

 a saw mill, a wind mill, or of any of the mowing 

 machines, threshing machines, or other machines 

 used in agriculture. He will have occasion to use 

 one or more of these mills and machines, and he 

 may wish to construct or superintend the construc- 

 tion of any one of them. He ought, therefore, 

 to study the elements of machinery, elements per- 

 fectly simple when taken individually, and yet 

 which may become very complex and difficult to 

 comprehend, when seen combined. 



Almost every farmer has occasion to dig ditch- 

 es, to build dikes, and to dig wells, and employ, 

 and often to repair, pumps. He ought, therefore, 

 to understand the principles of the pressure of 

 water, so as to be able to build wells and dikes ef- 

 fectually to resist that pressure. He ought, then, 

 to study what are called hydrostatics and hydrau- 

 lics. When he understands them, — and they are 

 more easy to understand than most things in his- 

 tory, arithmetic and grammar, and many things 

 in geography, — when he understands them, he 

 will be able to direct, with very little aid, the 

 building of hydraulic presses and pipes, and other 

 water conveyances of every kind. 



The farmer ought to understand on what prin- 

 ciples it is that the pressure of air causes water 

 to rise in the pipe of his pump, and thus ren- 

 ders a common pump possible, and how the com- 

 mon lifting pump and the common forcing pump 

 act. That is, he ought to study the elementary 

 principles of pneumatics. These are hard Greek 

 names ; but the things themselves and the prin- 

 ciples on which they operate are as intelligible, 

 with proper books and tolerable instruction, as 

 anything in the plainest English. In addition to 

 these things, he ought to know something of the 

 action and laws of heat. He ought to know how 

 much heat will convert snow or ice into water ; 

 how much additional heat will raise the water to 

 the boiling point, and how much will convert it 

 all into steam ; and how much heat will be re- 

 quired to give to this steam, if confined in a close 

 vessel, any certain amount of explosive force. 



With this knowledge, and the knowledge of 

 which I have already spoken, any farmer's boy 

 may easily understand the structure of the steam 

 engine, and its mode of acting, and the power 

 with which it acts. And so much knowledge ev- 

 ery farmer ought to possess. 



And the time which might be saved from that 

 now devoted to arithmetic, spelling, reading and 

 English grammar, without injury to either of those 



