672 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Dec. 



the fact that corn fed to hogs has produced all the 

 way from two to twenty pounds gain, a bushel, 

 according to the different modes of preparing feed, 

 and the age, breed or condition of hogs fed. He is 

 satisfied that over one-half of all the hogs fed in 

 Iowa, do not produce over five pounds gross 

 weight for each bushel of corn fed, which, counting 

 hogs at ft3 per hundred pounds, gives fifteen cents 

 per bushel for corn. , 



Vermont Dairymen. — At the annual meeting 

 of the Vermont Dairymens' Association at Mont- 

 pelier, Oct. 25, Hon. E. D. Mason was elected 

 president; W. P. Nash, C. Horace Hubliard and 

 C. W. Brownell, Vice presidents, and O. S. Bliss, 

 secretary and treasurer. 



AQRICULTT7RAL ITEMS. 



— The latest device for "breaking up" a setting 

 hen is to put a couple of lumps of ice in the nest. 



— It is stated that Texas, west of the , Colprado, 

 has taken ® 1,000,000 or more in gold for cattle and 

 horses within one hundred days. 



— Commissioner Delano, of New York, has de- 

 cided that a farmer selling his produce from his 

 own wagon, without any regular business stand, is 

 not liable to pay a tax as a produce dealer. 



— Experiments often repeated have shown that a 

 plant may be raised in a flower pot from a seed and 

 receive no nourishment but pure water, yet shall 

 far exceed in weight all tlie soil in which it grew. 



—Of the Michigan Agricultural College Farm, 

 although it contains over 600 acres, but about 150 

 acres are under cultivation — the remainder being 

 either heavily timbered or swamp land. 



— Herkimer County, N. Y., ships annually cheesy 

 and butter, worth #4,-500,000 in the market. St. 

 Albans, Vt., ships cheese and butter, worth in the 

 market $1,250,000. The village of Willington, 

 Ohio, cheese worth $1,500,000. 



— Moss peat is said to be one of the best materi- 

 als for ice houses. When it is thoroughly dried it 

 proves to be a poor conductor of heat, and when 

 laid up around ice houses above the ground, is 

 preferred by many persons to sawdust, tan bark, 

 and the like. 



—The Country Gentleman states that Messrs. E. 

 L. & J. N. Sturtevant, of South Framingham, pro- 

 pose to publish all the facts they can obtain illus- 

 trative of the history, characteristics and value of 

 the Ayrshire breed of cattle. 



— The moment any creature is found curled up 

 and shivering, there is a loss of comfort which 

 costs the owner mills and cents, if not dollars and 

 eagles; and it is far better economy to house stock 

 and give them extra feed and care at this season. 



—A wonderful instance of vegetable transmuta- 

 tion is mentioned by a correspondent of the loica 

 Homestead. A farmer purchased of a tree peddler 

 fifty different varieties of apples for a large orchard. 



In a few years these trees resolved themselves into 

 only two kinds. 



— A correspondefit of the Rural Kew Yorker 

 says: "Flies have been so bad on my horses that 

 I found it almost impossible to work •them. I took 

 smart weed and soaked it in water, and in the morn- 

 ing applied it to the horses with a sponge, all over 

 thorn, and found the horses to work along without 

 any further trouble, the flies not annoying them in 

 the least." 



— On the farm of Mr. Cyrus G. Smith, of New- 

 market, N. H., are a white oak fifty feet tall, and a 

 hemlock ten feet less, the butts of which seem to 

 be united one or two feet up. Further up a limb 

 of the oak grows through the hemlock and then a 

 hemlock through the oak, beating the Siamese 

 twins by long odds. 



— The question having arisen in a law suit 

 whether certain animals were sheep or lambs, the 

 decision was made, according to Hearth and Home, 

 not by the age, which was fifteen months, but by 

 testimony as to whether they had their first per- 

 manent teeth. Legally then a lamb becomes a 

 sheep when it gets its first permanent teeth. 



— Jeremiah Cousens, of Kennebunk, Me., eighty- 

 one years of age, and a well known veteran of the 

 war of 1812, has mowed upwards of seventeen 

 acres of grass land this season and carried it lot by 

 lot on poles to the barn, besides walking two and 

 one-half miles to the house of his daughter, and 

 attending to her gardening. 



Fodder Corn. — It is better to sow the 

 corn rather thick together at the rate of about 

 three bushels per acre. In this way we get 

 smaller stalks, which are more easily cured 

 and better when fed to the cattle. I have 

 the rows from 28 to 30 inches apart. After 

 the corn is a few inches liigli, run the culti- 

 vator between the rows, slightly hilling it, and 

 the corn will soon cover the ground, and there 

 will be little trouble afterwards with the 

 weeds. If it is sown so as to be cut early, a 

 crop of turnips can be grown after the corn is 

 taken off. — S. F. Lane, Rockinyltam Co., 

 N. H., in Country Gentleman. 



New Varieties of Weeds. — It is stated 

 that there are now no less than two hundred 

 and fourteen weeds which have been intro- 

 duced into the United States from foreign 

 countries, and principally from England. As 

 a proof of the rapidity with which useless 

 plants are accidently brought over the seas, it 

 is said that in 1837 there were only one hun- 

 dred and thirty-seven foreign weeds known in 

 this country. As far back as 1672 a curious 

 little volume, called "New England Rarie- 

 ties," gave a list of twenty-two plants which 

 the author considered had sprung up since the 

 English had kept cattle in New England. 



