1871 ] 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



167 



placed on a high, dry, gravelly or sandy knoll. 



If the little flea beetles attack the plants 

 cover with ashes, plaster of Paris or air 

 slacked lime. Too much ashes or lime may 

 injure the leaves ; if the beetles stay, they 

 aurely will. If the cut worms gnaw off one 

 plant a new one must be set in its place. 



I have not tried to give the whole process of 

 making or managing a hot bed, but to give 

 my own mode where it differs from that of 

 others, and to show wherein beginners are 

 most apt to fail. A. W. Cheever. 



Skddunville, Mass., Feb. 29, 1871. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 IMPORTANCE OF DRAINING. 



The practice of draining wet lands and 

 swamps (where a sujierabundance of water 

 lies on the surface or near the surface,) does 

 not receive the atft'ntion that its importance 

 demands in this country. I venture to say 

 there are no improvements that can be made 

 on many farms in New England and else- 

 where, that will add so much to the produc- 

 tive capacity of the land and revenue to its 

 owner as underdrainiiig, which has a great ad- 

 vantage over open drains, when outlets for 

 the drains can be secured to advantage ; for in 

 this case large fields tan be relieved of surface 

 water without the obstruction of an open drain 

 to the ])longh, cart or wagon. On farms 

 where an abundance of stones are convenient 

 to the land to be drained, and which the farmer 

 wishes to rid his lands of, they may be used to 

 advantage, but in the absence of stone, tiles are 

 the cheapest and make the most durable drains. 

 In this locality the manufacturers sell them for 

 twenty dollars j)er thousand for two-inch, which 

 is a trille more than thirty cents per rod, de- 

 livered at the manufactory, and for three-inch 

 tile the price is twentj-seven dollars jjcr thou- 

 sand. Very little beside two and three inch 

 tile are used for connuon draining, the three- 

 inch for the main, and two-inch for the latter- 

 als. Mr. John Johnston, the grand old Scotch 

 farmer of New York, well knew what his tile 

 would do, when his neighbors asked him what 

 he was laying his crockery in the ground for. 

 He knew his land would be improved from one 

 to three hundred per cent. I once heard a 

 traveller, (a professional gentleman of exten- 

 sive observation) say that in passing through 

 England on all the great thoroughfares he saw 

 large piles of tile for underdraining the soil. 



England, Scotland and Ireland are far in 

 advance of us in the art of draining, but I 

 think the day is not far distant when the wet 

 lands of our farms will l>e thoroughly drained, 

 so as to produce an abundance of grass and 

 grain. 



Mr. Editor, I give you a little experience I 

 had some years since in draining. In the year 

 1850 I ploughed a lot of clay loam soil with a 

 heavy clay subsoil. There were about five 

 acres, and it was ploughed about the 12th of 



May, for corn. It rained almost daily for two 

 or three weeks, which caused a good stream 

 of water to run through a low part of the lot, 

 consisting of about one acre. It was so wet 

 that I could not plant it till the seventh day of 

 June. The corn was very light on the low 

 ground. The next year (1851) it was sowed 

 with oats, and seeded with timothy and clover, 

 and on this acre of said land the crop was al- 

 most a total failure. That same year, after 

 the oats were harvested, a ditch was dug from 

 two and a half to three feet deep through the 

 centre of the low land, it being about sixty- 

 three rods long, three inch tile was laid about 

 fifteen rods from the outlet, and the remain- 

 ing distance was laid with two inch tile. The 

 following year it was mowed, and the crop on 

 that underdrained was much the heaviest of the 

 field, yielding two or three tons per acre of 

 good sweet hay. The drain has worked ad- 

 mirably to this day. The surface water never 

 standing on it more than twelve to fifteen 

 hours after a heavy rain. I think the increase 

 of crops more than paid the expense in the 

 two succeeding years. The past Autumn was 

 very favorable for draining, and I improved it 

 by draining some swamp land with tile, except 

 some of it which was so mucky that I used 

 round stone from the Deerfield River, the re- 

 sidt of which I cannot speak of now. 



I would say to all farmers who are troubled 

 with a superabundance of water, underdrain, 

 by all means, if you can find a good outlet for 

 the water, and you will not be disappointed, if 

 you do the work thoroughly. 



James Childs. 



Deerfield, Mass., 1871. 



UTILIZING BONES. 



If a farmer has collected a pile of bones 

 which he desires to fit for plant food, he can 

 accomplish the end in two or three different 

 ways : 1st, by dissolving them in sulphuric 

 acid in the raw condition ; 2d, by dissolving 

 after burning to whiteness ; 3d, by dissolving 

 them in connection with caustic lye from ashes 

 and soda. 



Bones cannot be dissolved in acid economi- 

 cally, unless they are reduced to a fine powder. 

 Pounding them into small fragments will not 

 do, as but a part of the bone substance can be 

 acted upon by the acid when fragments are 

 submitted to its action. An insoluble coating 

 of sulphate of lime forms around each frag- 

 ment after the first action of the acid, and 

 this arrests further decomposition. As a 

 matter of experiment, we have submitted 

 powdered bones to the action of strong and 

 dilute acid, for six months, and the solution 

 at the end of that time was far from being 

 com])lete. 



Raw bones are very difficult to grind in any 

 mill accessible to farmers, and therefore it 

 will be best, if it is desired to make "super- 

 phosphate," to construct a kiln of stones, 



