1867. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



379 



the soil to such an extent, that eveiy inch of rain 

 that falls upon the land would be required by the 

 growing vegetation. It now goes through the 

 drains simply because it runs through the cracks 

 in the gi'ound ; it does not go through the soil. 



— Mr. J. Strickler, Monroe, Pa., who has been a 

 farmer fifty-six years, wishes to know how the 

 Yankees manage to give their sons a good college 

 learning and keep them at farming after they have 

 got through ? Who said they did do it ? 



— A piece of rooting slate, any thin flat stone, or 

 even a shingle, placed under canteloupes, water- 

 melons, &c., will prevent the ground from extract- 

 ing the flavor from the lower part of the melon, 

 and also considerably hasten its ripening. 



— Mr. H. Murray, of Clay, Illinois, has a plastic 

 slate roof which has been on eight months, and 

 after a three hours' rain the water has a bad taste, 

 which unfits it for a cistern. Besides this, it gives 

 the water a yellow tinge, which strikes into the 

 white clothes when washed. 



— From a ewe 22^ months old, Mr. W. B. De- 

 nio of East Rupert, Vt., sheared a fleece, the 

 growth of 11^ months, which weighed 18 lbs., and 

 she had a lamb by her side. Her first fleece 

 weighed 12:| lbs. She was sired by C. D. Sweet's 

 (Hammond) buck of North Bennington. 



— On Mr. J. T. Warder's farm of 600 acres, near 

 Cincinnati, Ohio, there are four fields of seventy 

 or eighty acres each, on which the rotation is to 

 turn over the sod for com, which is followed by 

 wheat, then seeded to clover and timothy, and then 

 mowed or pastured two years. 



— The following grumble at the weather should 

 be read, as it was evidently written, in a wet spell : 



I'd like to hire a man to stop 



Each crevice in the sky; 

 Though rain may benefit the crop, 



I'm not a crop, not I. 



— A correspondent of the American Agriculturist 

 says that rats dislike coal tar very much, and that 

 he is in the habit of daubing it about their holes 

 and runs, with good results. Coal tar mixed with 

 sand to the consistency of thick mortar, is an 

 efi'ectual stopper to rat-holes. 



— We are informed by a correspondent that Mr. 

 Daniel Carleton of North Andover, Mass., sold last 

 year pigs to the amount of $160, the product of 

 two litters of one sow six years old, besides three 

 which he kept himself. There were ten pigs in 

 the first litter and thirteen in the second. 



— In regard to killing Canada thistles by plow- 

 ing and hoeing, a correspondent of the New York 

 Farmers' Club says he has a piece of land that has 

 been hoed 15 years, and there are ten thistles now 

 to one where he commenced. He succeeds better 

 in mowing them when in blossom. 



— Mr. D. T. Clough of Thetford, Vt., informs 

 us that a buck of his from Sanford's Comet, which 

 "was kept on poor swail hay, until March, and 

 without exposure to the sun, this spring, sheared 



21 lbs., and after shearing weighed 93 lbs." What 

 would the fleece have weighed if the animal had 

 been fed up to 125 lbs. ? He was two years old. 



— Prof. Vandervier states the grape growers on 

 the Rhine, after experimenting a thousand years 

 have found that a particular grape is required for a 

 particular soil, which is of limited extent, and that 

 guano, when applied, so injured the quality of the 

 wine that the guano had to be dug out and thrown 

 away. 



— Cattle are becoming so scarce in the Northern 

 States that it was encouraging to read in a late 

 Jacksonville, Fla., Union, that such immense herds 

 of cattle are roaming at will through the wilds of 

 that State and Georgia, as to prove a serious in- 

 convenience to the railroad trains which traverse 

 those sections. 



— The Paris Exposition coiTcspondent of the 

 Prairie Farmer says that Comstock's Rotary 

 Spader, there on exhibition, has been tested and 

 did most excellent work ; that it is attracting very 

 general attention, and is now being manufactured 

 in England, Austria and Prussia, and that the im- 

 plement is greatly improved over anything he had 

 seen In this country. 



— A creosoted sleeper, put down on the Stockton 

 and Darlington Railway, in England, in August, 

 1841, was taken up March 14, 1867, after nearly 25 

 years' service. The gi-ain of the wood, although 

 slightly discolored by creosote, is as fresh and 

 apparently as tough as that of newly-sawed tim- 

 ber, and the odor of creosote is as strong as if the 

 wood had just been operated upon. 



A SUMMER SUNSET. 



It seemed as though the gates of heaven 



Were opened in the West, 

 And all the angels looking out, 



In shining garments drest. 



Their radiant forms went flitting past 



The gateway of the blest, 

 Then In a chariot of flame 



They took the sun to rest. 



—H. M. L. in Rural New Yorker. 



— A correspondent of the Country Gentleman, 

 whose experience with the Brahmas was unfavor- 

 able, says he had got out of patience with hia 

 common fowls, but when he commenced with the 

 Brahmas, wishing to make a fair comparison, he 

 gave them as good treatment as the Brahmas, and 

 to his surprise they have laid more profusely, and 

 thus far have proved, in all respects, superior to 

 the Brahmas. 



— During a late visit to the farm of Mr. J. T. 

 Warder, near Cincinnati, the editor of the Country 

 Gentleman was informed that in thirty years four 

 wheat crops had been lost — in two instances from 

 rust, and twice from freezing out. The crop of 

 1866 was a total failure, from the latter cause, 

 throughout almost the whole of this part of Ohio. 

 On 175 acres Mr. Warder did not cut a single sheaf! 

 Land, labor, and seed, were a total loss. 



— A dusting of dry wood ashes is recommended 

 by W. N. Barnett, of West Haven, Ct., in the 



