648 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Oct. 



chincapins, bazlenuts, pecan-nuts and sbag- j 

 barks of the United States are not cultivated 

 and appropriated as tbey ougbt to be. Vast 

 forest tracts should be devoted to their exclu- 

 sive culture, and machinery devised for ex- 

 tracting their kernels, and manufacturing them 

 into food-staples. The meats of these nuts 

 are exactly adapted in their constituent chem- 

 ical atoms to form hydro-carbonized and fil)ri- 

 nized foods, better calculateil to sustain the 

 body of man in intensely cold weather than 

 the tlesh of the inferior animals. 



In California the native sugar-pine, a grand 

 and lofty tree, supplies the Digger Indians 

 with large ([uantities of powerful heat-forming 

 and tiesh-producing nuts. In Nevada, the 

 pinton or feather-pine feeds the Pale Utes 

 largely during the winter months. The sickly 

 among the Indians are said to recuperate, and 

 grow robust and fat when the pine nut season 

 arrives. 



Beans, when cooked with fat, are quite 

 analogous to nuts in their sustaining qualities, 

 and a vegetable oil might always be used in 

 preference to pork. Fried beans and tortil- 

 las, — flat cakes made from Indian corn, — are 

 the staple dish in Mexico. Pea soup every 

 alternate day is the regulation dinner in the 

 English merchant service. 



The fact is the best vegetable substances 

 are but meagerly appropriated by man. In- 

 dian corn is really a sort of dwarf annual 

 palm, and its seeds are more nutritive than 

 those of wheat, rye, barley, oats, or any other 

 of the grasses. The Mexican way of utilizing 

 corn is probably the best, and might be con- 

 ducted by factories on a great scale. The 

 corn should be soaked in lime water ufitil the 

 cuticle rubs off easily, then ground and dried. 

 Meal made in this way is almost as fine and 

 white as starch, and very palatable, — more 

 palatable than wheat Hour, more soluble, more 

 easily masticated, and more nutritious. Our 

 common corn meal consists of rough, angular 

 fragments when microscopically examined, — 

 hard, silicious and almost as insoluble as ilint. 

 Machinery for making .\merican corn meal was 

 once taken to Acapulco, but the Mexicans re- 

 : fused to patronize it, preferring, although they 

 . are a proverbially lazy race, to rub their corn 

 to a paste on Hat stones, by hand, in the old- 

 • fashioned way. If their plan was imitated in 

 in the United States by machines, the edible 

 produced would soon become popular, and a 

 ■ formidable rival to wheat flour. 



Farming in the United States, while becom- 

 ing avowedly more scientific every year, is 

 really becoming less and less practical. Yet 

 it is as practicable as ever, and shoidd be im- 

 mensely profitable, even in barren Massachu- 

 setts. There is scarcely an acre of land in 

 this State which cannot be made vastly remu- 

 nerative in two or three years by careful til- 

 lage alone without the application of any ma- 

 i nure except such as is applied naturally by 

 ; sun, air and water. 



This may seem a wild statement to some. 

 I invite those who are skeptical to make the 

 following experiment : Let any one who has 

 sterile upland pasture land, overrun with li- 

 chens, ferns, bayberry bushes, &c., plough 

 ten acres or Ifss this fall, ridging it across 

 the natural inclination of the land. This will 

 check the waterfall, and cause a rapid disinte- 

 gration of mineral matters contained. Let 

 a cheap windmill, with wooden cisterns be 

 erected on the highest point, which shall pump 

 water from a well, pond or stream. In the 

 spring cross-plough, harrow and ridge the land 

 as before, and plant Indian corn and white 

 beans on the alternate ridges. Cultivate as 

 usual, without giving any artificial manure, 

 but irrigating freely throughout the summer. 

 When the crop is harvested, throw all the 

 stalks and vines into the furrows, and plough 

 back, ridging where the furrows were, and 

 plant the next season, com on the bean ridges 

 and beans on the corn ridges, and note the 

 increased yield. No forage from such crops 

 should be wasted by exposure, or taken from 

 the land. It is more valuable as a humus- 

 producing material than in any other way. 



I do not pretend to affirm that crops of 

 coru and white beans alone will pay for the 

 immediate outlay required for this experiment, 

 but I do state my belief that systematic irriga- 

 tion and return of waste substance to the soil, 

 without the intervention of the barn-yard, will 

 gradually fertilize land so that fine fruits and 

 vegetables can be grown on it in a few years 

 and which will not be as liable to suffer from 

 blights and insects as when cultivated in the 

 usual manner. ISIy observation of climates 

 and soils here in the East, in California and 

 the Sandwich Islands, has led me to the con- 

 clusion that hand-irrigation will pay propor- 

 tionally as well in old Massachusetts as in for- 

 eign lands. 



Kingston, Mass., Aug. 24, 1871. 



Remarks. — We should judge that Kingston 

 offers as favorable conditions as most other 

 localities for a practical test of the theory of 

 our correspondent, and we hope he will illus- 

 trate its feasibility by an experiment which 

 shall demonstrate the fact that for once at 

 least the practical world is not altogether un- 

 scientific. 



Discipline of English Jockeys. — The Tiirf, 

 Field and Farm gives the particuhirs of a case 

 where a rider in one of the late English races fell 

 from his horse in a fit, striking on his liead and 

 injuring himself seriously if not fatally, and states 

 that his illness was caused by the severe sweating, 

 dieting, &c., to which he had been sulyected to de- 

 crease his weight. It is also stated that it is cus- 

 tomary for the English jockeys to suliject them- 

 selves to such treatment to reduce themselves to a 

 certain weight. 



