192 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



April 



years ago, when I caused a hole two inches in 

 diameter to be drilled twelve feet in the bot- 

 tom, at a trifling expense, that struck a vein 

 of water that rose up into the well and has 

 furnished a plentiful supply for house and 

 barn most of the time since. 



One of your correspondents inquires for the 

 cheapest and most powerful stump puller, and 

 is directed to a triangular frame of timber 

 placed upright and the chain drawing over in 

 a notch in one of the points, and hitched down 

 to a root on the opposite side of the stump. 

 This is a good device so far as it goes, but more 

 power is needed for large stum])s. In addi- 

 tion to this, buy a common tackle and falls 

 with double blocks and one inch rope, to cost 

 ten or twelve dollars. This is needed by 

 every farmer for many other purposes ; such 

 as dressing hogs and cattle, moving heavy 

 stones, logs or small buildings. Hitch the 

 head block to the chain over the triangle, and 

 the other block to a chain fastened to another 

 stimip, tree or, if nothing better, to a post, 

 down close to the ground. Hit^h a good yoke 

 of oxen to the rope, by taking a peculiar turn 

 in the rope called a "cat's paw," into which 

 hook the draw chain of the oxen and pull ! 

 Never a stump was found too stubborn to 

 leave its native bed, short of the rumored big 

 ones of California. 



I have some one-year-old heifers that last 

 year took to gnawing wood, stones and brick. 

 They looked gaunt and poor, though fed on 

 good English hay, which they ate languidly, 

 preferring thereto oat straw, hard corn stalks, 

 alias Dr. L9ring's "meanest of fodder." I 

 gave them clear bone meal, which they de- 

 vourecPmore greedily than Indian meal. They 

 shortly improved in appearance. Mine is not 

 a solitary case ; many cows have been gnaw- 

 ing board fences, bricks and red stones. I have 

 considerable swamp hay that is hard to eat, 

 . and when eaten is but little worth. I tried 

 lime and salt in curing, some years since, and 

 found that to be a humbug. 1 have tried bone 

 meal and salt on this hay, and the cattle eat 

 it as greedily as they would any English hay. 

 I believe that fifty pounds of bone meal in a 

 ton of meadow hay would make it fully equal 

 to as much good English hay. 



An abundant crop of apples the past year 

 has brought the farmer but a poor rewai-d for 

 years of care in raising orchards, and for the 

 loss of a portion of the best land in his fields, 



• devoted to the trees, owing to his stujjidity in 

 . allowing middle men to set the prices for him. 

 . Apples are now forty cents a i)eck in Boston 



to the consumer, and only $1.,50 a barrel to 

 the producers in the country. 1 think farm- 

 ers should form associations, like mechanics and 



• other business classes, and fi.x their own prices 

 . and place honest men in the cities, as conunis- 



sion men , and dispense with speculators and mid- 

 dlemen, thereby making it better for producer 

 and consumer. Until farmers as a body are 

 , ready to devise some measures for their own 



protection, they may well complain of the un- 

 profitableness of agriculture. They will find to 

 their sorrow that an eternal delving and strain- 

 ing of the sinnews in physical force upon the 

 soil, undirected by a corresponding effort of 

 the brain, can never bring competency or 

 wealth to them. Two serious barriers hedge 

 up his way to prosperity, viz. : high taxes and 

 high labor. The last being the cause of the 

 great disparity of agriculture with us and the 

 old world. The laborer here receives as much 

 for a day's labor as he does in many of the Eu- 

 ropean countries for a week. Yet such are 

 the prices of imported and manufactured 

 goods consumed by the laborer that he can 

 hardly live and support his family on less wa- 

 ges than he now receives. Hence initil some 

 modifications of the above named obstacles in 

 the way of the farmers are effected that shall 

 not cause the machinery of the body politic to 

 grate harshly on the interests of other classes, 

 the great profitableness and prosperity of ag- 

 riculture must remain amongst the things that 

 "were, but are not." M. J. ILvrvey. 



Epjnng, N. H., 1871. 



INFECTIOUS GEE.MS. 



The spread of the new cattle disease, epi- 

 zootic aptlia, in this country, under circum- 

 stances so remarkable, has awakened in the 

 minds of farmers and others a desire to learn 

 something of the nature of the contagious 

 principle, and the mysterious manner in which 

 it is couununicated from one animal to another. 



An agent of infection so subtle that a dog 

 or cat walking through a barn where diseased 

 animals are kept, and then running four or 

 five miles in the open air and entering a«other 

 barn, infects a herd of healthy aninuils with- 

 out contact, must be regarded as extraordinary 

 in its nature. After all, it is no more extra- 

 ordinary or wonderful than the infectious 

 germs of sraall-pox, scarlet fever or measles, 

 which are readily conveyed very long distances 

 in the clothing, and in the air, and which re- 

 main uninfluenced by meteorological agencies, 

 heat and cold, wet and dry. The suscepti- 

 bility of different individuals to the- influence 

 of contagious germs is no less wonderfid than 

 the nature of the germs themselves. It may 

 be said that no two persons are affected alike 

 by them, and it is i)robable that the same 

 difference prevails among animals. Indeed, 

 we have instances of some lierds attacked by 

 the new disease, in which five, ten and even 

 twenty per cent, of the animals I'emain in per- 

 fect health. They are confined in the same 

 stalls with those diseased, and breathe the 

 poisoned air night and day, and yet not a 

 function is disturb(!d or a vital movement in- 

 terfered with. Among human beings, we 

 know that a physician, nurse, or any person 

 leaving a room in wliich there is a patient sick 

 with scarlet fever or measles, may, in passing 

 a child upon the opposite side of the way, 



