136 



NEW ENGLAND FARIVIER. 



ISIarch 



State, at the rate of fifteen bushels per acre, and 

 sold at 75 cents per bushel, the market price Dec. 

 20. As a remedy he proposes the encouragement 

 of manufactories in the State. 



— The California Farmer advises farmers and 

 others never to employ unlucky men, as unlucky is 

 only another name for laziness and incompetency. 

 All such should be provided for in charity asylums, 

 and not by industrious business men, as they gen- 

 erally prove clogs and hindrances. 



— Mr. Stevens, of Herkimer Co., N. Y., being 

 short of pasture has adopted this plan several 

 times, and always with the best results. After 

 taking ofl' a crop, he sows winter rye and seeding 

 with grass at the same time. The next season he 

 turns stock upon the rye about the iOih of May, 

 and it lurnishes good feed through the entire sea- 

 son or until full, when the grass begun to yield 

 feed also. 



— An Ohio correspondent of the New York 

 Rural gives the following remedy for Poll Evil : 

 "Build a platform, so that you can go up on it ten 

 feet with a ladder. Place the horse underneath, 

 with a groom to hold him in such a position that 

 you can pour pure soft water from a teakettle into 

 the sore. Pour into it t.vo pails of water three 

 times a day for two or three weeks, when the pipe 

 and everything will come out clean, and the head 

 heal over as good as ever." 



— In reply to an inquiry of a farmer who com- 

 plains that on land in Pennsylvania on which he 

 formerly raised from 30 to 35 bushels of wheat, but 

 now from only 12 to 20, and that the grain lodges 

 badly, Mr. Geo. Gcddes, of Fairmount, N. Y., 

 advises, if the land is rich, to use the Treadwell, 

 Deihl and other stiff-strawed varieties. "Weak- 

 Etrawed varieties, like the Mediterranean, vfill do 

 best on poor lands ; also to use less seed, and two 

 or three bushels of salt, broadcast, to the acre. 



— In a lecture before the Connecticut State Board 

 of Agriculture, on parasites. Prof. Verrill said that 

 the bed bug is nocturnal and gregarious in its hab- 

 its and hence easy to get rid of. It loves home 

 and returns when possible every night to the same 

 haunts. They lay eggs with a lid on the top, about 

 100 each, and so a few dozens in a season will 

 stock a house. They arc allied to the louse. Six 

 parts of crude petroleum to a hundred parts of 

 water is a simple remedy. 



— A former resident of Eden, Vt., now residing 

 in Olmstead Co., Minn., writes to a friend: "I 

 have raised this year 9000 bushels of wheat and 

 2000 bushels of oats, and have had to go back on 

 my stock to pay expenses and taxes. While we 

 arc in prosperity and abundance of grain, we are 

 in the midst of poverty, as wheat has but little 

 more than paid for the harvesting. No. 1 wheat 

 is only 55 cents per bushel, and during the fall 

 the average price has only been 65 cents." 



— In France there are 470 beet-root sugar fac- 

 tories, 116 in Belgium, and 255 in Prussia. Thirty 



years ago only 50,000 tons of beet sugar were 

 made in all Europe ; last year, 2,500,000 tons were 

 produced in Switzerland atone. In Austria, Rus- 

 sia, and many other countries in Europe, propor- 

 tionate amounts are made. The aid to agriculture 

 also, which at first was not thought of, has proved 

 great. Beets are the best kind of food for horned 

 cattle, and thousands are raised now where hun- 

 dreds only were before. In the C'istrict of coun- 

 try surrounding the city of Valenciennes, where, 

 before the production of beet sugar, 700 oxen was 

 the total amount, 11,500 were raised last year. 



WE'W PUBLICATIONS. 



Report of the Commissionek of Agriculture for 

 the year 1869. 



The first report of Commissioner Capron shows, 

 we think, a better appreciation of the proper char- 

 acter of a department report than any of the issues 

 of his predecessors. The public expect from each 

 department of the government a statement of its 

 own operations. But whether the Treasury De- 

 partment should employ a man by the year to en- 

 lighten Congress as to its duties, or to prepare 

 electioneering documents for any of the parties 

 into the people of the country are divided, or 

 whether the Agricultural Department should print 

 essays of individual farmers or scholars, or ad- 

 vertisements of different sections or books, are 

 questions which will probably be answered differ- 

 ently by difl'erent people. There has been much 

 dissatisfaction expressed with the character of the 

 agricultural reports of the past, and many sugges- 

 tions made for their improvement, and we believe 

 that the present issue will be more generally ac- 

 ceptable than any previous volume from the depart- 

 ment of agriculture, though it embraces some mat- 

 ters which it appears to us do not belong to a 

 'report." 



Some of the Hindrances and Helps to the ad- 

 vancement of Agriculture. An Address before the 

 New York Agricultural Soolety, 1869, by George 

 Bxiokland, Professor of Agriculture, Univjreity Col- 

 lege, Toronto, Can., and Secretary of the Board of 

 Agriculture of Toronto. Albany : 1869. 



In speaking of the connection between science 

 and agriculture, and of the valuable aid the for- 

 mer has of late years rendered the latter, with a 

 prospect of still greater benefit in time to come, 

 Prof. Buckland says, I wish to guard myself 

 against being understood as countenancing the er- 

 roneous and impracticable idea that an intelligent 

 and improving farmer must, in the professional 

 sense of the term, be "a man of science." Such 

 an opinion this audience need not to be told is 

 quite Utopian. The progress of- the natural and 

 experimental sciences of the present day is so 

 marvelously great that it requires the energies of a 

 life to keep pace with almost any one of them. If 

 youths, intended for farming, as a means of ob- 

 taining a livelihood, were placed in the laboratory 

 to acquire and master the very delicate art of 

 manipulation in the higher branches of organic 



