1864. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



217 



fair, as they used to do. Wherever my observation 

 extends in Vermont there are plenty of them. Apple 

 trees blossomed very thickly in this vicinity this year, 

 but there will be but few apples, I am satisfied. 



Can some of your wise entomologists tell us if this 

 is their perfect state, when they are deposited on the 

 trees, when they disappear, and if we can get rid of 

 them? If not, my advice is, do not plant apple trees 

 in Vermont ; it is time and money wasted. 



Washington, Vt., June, 1864. J. J. Watson. 



Remarks.— It is humiliating to attempt to answer 

 inquiries like either of the foregoing. Dominion over 

 "every living thing that moveth upon the earth," was 

 in the beginning promised to man. But though he 

 may have sought out many inventions it is evident 

 that his "mission" is not yet fulfilled. In passing 

 through Cambridge the other day, we noticed that the 

 canker worm had commenced its annual ravages on 

 the fruit and ornamental trees of that beautiful sec- 

 tion j sparing neither those which surround the 

 princely mansions of the faculty of Old Harvard, or 

 those which shade the very door-steps of her natural- 

 ists — her Agassiz and her late Harris. The insect 

 described by Mr. Watson is probably one of the nu- 

 merous family of Aphidid<e, or plant-lice. One of our 

 contemporaries in reply to similar inquiries by a cor- 

 respondent, gravely suggests the application of a wash. 

 But just think of washing the buds of not only a sin- 

 gle large apple tree, but all the buds of all the trees of 

 a large orchard ! And yet this is about the sum of 

 our knowledge of the means for the destruction of in- 

 sects injurious to vegetation. The thumb and fingers 

 of children in connection with a dish of hot water, con- 

 stitute the most effectual machine for the destruction 

 of rose bugs that we know of. Offer a small price per 

 thousand for their heads, and if that fails then appeal 

 to the "wise entomologists" for further directions. 



Fancy Farming. — Mr. C. W. Carpenter, Mt. 

 Gilead, Ohio, writes to the New York City Farm- 

 ers' Club, a dissertation on Fruit-growing, which 

 is published in the New York Tribune. His ar- 

 ticle closes with the advice that every farmer give 

 his wife "a quarter, a half, or even one acre to 

 plant to grapes, blackberries, raspberries or straw- 

 berries." He says, "If a woman takes good care 

 of her fruit garden, besides supplying her family 

 with health-giving luxuries, she can have a hun- 

 dred dollars worth, or more, of fruit to sell every 

 year." "Such exercise," he adds, addressing the 

 women, "will give increased vigor of body and 

 the light, elastic step ; then you can fly around 

 and do your housework in a jiffy." We would 

 not presume to limit the endurance of the Buck- 

 eye ladies, but in New England we apprehend 

 that few farmers' wives will be likely to add the 

 care of an acre of strawberries to their other du- 

 ties, however acceptable the one hundred dollars 

 might be to them. 



Birds and Insects. — In a recent club debate 

 about insects, Mr.«Prince, one of the oldest and 

 most extensive nursery men in the vicinity of 

 New York city, said that on his grounds they pre- 

 serve all the birds and are not troubled with in- 

 sects. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 SHEEP HUSBANDRY — No. 5. 



It has been frequently asserted that no country 

 adapted to sheep husbandry ever entered upon 

 that branch of- agriculture without becoming 

 wealthy. Probably in no country, in proportion 

 to the extent of territory, has the breeding and 

 keeping of sheep been so extensively carried on 

 as in England, and no country in the world can 

 boast of more wealth. That this is the result of 

 sheep husbandry alone, we do not believe ; but 

 we do believe that it is one of its principal sources 

 of wealth, and we maintain that no farmer ever 

 introduced sheep upon his farm, but his land was 

 improved thereby, and if his sheep were properly 

 cared for, his finances were also improved. And 

 no farmer ever abandoned sheep husbandry, but 

 his farm suffered in consequence, and his income 

 proportionately diminished. In England, he is 

 considered a poor farmer, and not up to the spirit 

 of the times, wlrb keeps no sheep. 



It is a well established fact that on any pasture, 

 stocked to its utmost capacity with cows, as many 

 sheep may be added, and a horse introduced oc- 

 casionally, and the pasture not impoverished, but 

 improved. Sheep will feed upon the herbage which 

 cows reject. It is an old adage and a true one, 

 that horses alone impoverish a pasture, cattle alone 

 improve, but sheep alone enrich it. Where horses, 

 cattle and sheep are allowed to feed in the same 

 pasture, we always find the grass evenly cropped, 

 no unsightly tufts of grass with their rank, coarse 

 growth, left to rot upon the ground, but all is 

 economical. 



In England, he who should talk of running out 

 a pasture would only submit himself to ridicule. 

 There, it is always presumed that a pasture will 

 be improved, and it is no rare occurrence to take 

 one, two, and sometimes three crops of grain from 

 a newly broken-up pasture before applying ma- 

 nure ; and commonly when a field has been hard 

 run in tillage for a number of years, so that its 

 fertility has been impaired, it is seeded down, and 

 converted into pasture in order to improve it. 

 This the farmer calls laying it down to rest. The 

 landlord never objects to his land being laid down 

 to pasture ; but the tenant is never allowed to 

 plow up that which was down when he hired his 

 farm, only under an expressed agreement. It 

 would be well, perhaps, to state in this connection, 

 that in England, dairy cows are never stabled 

 during the night. In many cases they are milked 

 in the pasture, and when driven up for that pur- 

 pose they are returned as soon as they have been 

 milked. The English farmer does not confine the 

 fertilizing powers of the sheep to his pasture, but 

 he makes them fertilize his arable lands. In the 

 vicinity of the Downs, it is a common practice to 

 fold the sheep at night upon their arable lands, 

 which feed upon the hills by day, and this is 

 about all the manure they apply. 



Mr. Hiram Barbus, in the Agricultural Report 

 of 1860, quotes the following from Mr. Stephens, 

 that a dressing thus given by three hundred sheep 

 is sufficient in one week for an acre of land, and 

 is worth fifteen dollars or five cents per head per 

 week. Mr. Barbus asked the question : "May 

 not the universal deterioration of the lands in our 

 rural towns be attributed to the fact that the keep- 

 ing of sheep has been abandoned for that of cat- 

 tle ?" He says "it is laid down as a fact among 



