1870. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



427 



one winter, the former tenants having ne- 

 glected to have them cut and laid for many 

 years ; and this was done by an agreement in 

 writing with several hedgers and ditchers, who 

 agreed to cut and lay the hedges properly and 

 clean out the ditches, for the wood which 

 would be Jeft after they had wattled sufficient 

 in to remain strong enough to keep stock from 

 rambling, and they did well by the job and 

 made good work; while the mud, &c., thrown 

 out of the ditches, after sufficient had been 

 thrown on the banks among the roots of the 

 hawthorn stumps to make them the better, 

 was hauled and mixed up with gas lime and 

 other heavy matter, making compost enough 

 to dress heavily more than 100 acres of the 

 greensward. These hawthorn hedges are 

 good fences, when kept cropped off with 

 shears or hooks annually, around arable land, 

 and they are splendid fences around perma- 

 nent grass fields, when "cut and laid" every 

 ten years ; and when they are about from 

 eight to fourteen feet high, there is nothing 

 shelters a country like them. 



The dairying districts, the grazing and the 

 ploughed portions of the country, are all, but 

 in a very few cases, fenced with the hardy 

 hawthorn. On light hilly tracts of land, such 

 as the Cots wold Hills, &c., there are stone 

 walls, because the subsoil is not favorable for 

 making good hedges. 



USELESSKESS OP AG'L MACHINES. 



When all disputed questions are settled ; 

 when every man agrees perfectly with every 

 other man in everything ; when variety is no 

 longer the spice of life, what a spiceless, flat dish 

 agricultural and every other "life" will be! 

 And yet some people condemn agricultural 

 papers, and all scientific investigations, be- 

 cause every question is not settled, every 

 doubt removed, all variety merged into a dead 

 certainty, and somebody authorized to say to 

 every other body, "This is the way, walk ye 

 in it." These reflections were suggested by 

 reading an article in the St. Johnsbury, Vt., 

 Times on the proper time and best manner of 

 curing hay, which closes with the following 

 hit at modern hay-making machinery. 



Farmers have been shamefully defrauded by 

 venders of machinery for haying. Much of 

 it is worthless ; to a small farmer, all of it. 

 There are none but those who farm upon an 

 extended scale, that can affi9rd a mowing ma- 

 chine. On large fields, it is true, they work 

 well with such as know how to use them, but 

 even here where men depend upon hired help, 

 they are of little or no value. 



As much hay can be cut down in the fore- 

 noon as can be raked and carted in the after- 

 noon; but they argue that men allowed to 



shirk and rest in the forenoon will take hold 

 sharp in the afternoon. I can't see it. I 

 have tried both ways, and my experience iS' 

 that work can never be satisfactorily accom- 

 plished unless everything connected with it 

 bears the impress of business, live, energetic 

 business. A man that is lazy in the forenoon 

 will be lazy in the afternoon. Again the ma- 

 chine mows too much, and hay is left in every 

 conceivable shape at night. Men that finish 

 haying early always leave things in a tidy state 

 at night, if the weather looks ever so fine. It 

 costs $125 every three years for a machine 

 and the interest on it. It takes hay and grain 

 to keep a pair of horses in the barn, and the 

 worst of it is — and we can cite numerous in- 

 stances — men that would have their hay out of 

 the way in three weeks' time by the old 

 method, are four and five by the new. 



Horse rakes and tedders are only worse 

 than mowing machines. By the time hay is 

 fairly in the barn now-a-days, it is robbed of 

 all its natural fragrance, everything that 

 makes it pleasant and agreeable to the nos- 

 trils and stomach of the dumb beast. It is 

 trodden into the earth, broken, bruised, dusty, 

 dirty and commingled with every species of 

 filth imaginable. The only real argument in 

 favor of any of these implements is, they tend 

 to clean our fields. I know nothing of horse- 

 fork. Don't want to. 



Noblemen at Work — Few of us have 

 any idea of the fondness of the English aris- 

 tocracy for real hard work in their gardens 

 and grounds. Earl Vernon, formerly Presi- 

 dent of the Royal Agricultural Society of 

 England, would work all day, hoe in hand, 

 with his laborers, and as hard as any of them. 

 The writer of this paragraph has seen his 

 nephew for hours, axe in hand, thinning out 

 Ms own plantations ; and once saw him with 

 the Duke of Wellington, both together with a 

 cross-cut saw, cutting down a large Button- 

 wood. 



These reminiscences are called up by an 

 American correspondent who recently visited 

 Mr. Gladstone, the English Premier, at his 

 home at Ha warden, and who found him hack- 

 ing away a Beech fourteen feet in circumfer- 

 ence. He takes great pride in his ability to 

 do hard work, and believes, the correspondent 

 says, that physical exercise induces a good 

 appetite, and that this again reacts on mental 

 vigor. — Gardener's Monthly. 



Novel Horse Collar. — An important im- 

 provement in the manufacture of horse collars 

 has just been devised by a Philadelphia me- 

 chanic. The collar being stuffed with elastic 

 cork, is light in weight, and adapts itself to 

 the shape of the animal as readily as if it was 

 moulded. It is highly elastic, does not chafe 

 or gall the neck, and the cork bfiiig a non- 

 conductor, injury from the heat is prevented. 



