AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



273 



Siberia. — The plains of southern Siberia are wonderfully fertile. 

 Siberia contains 250 thousand square miles. Elephants' teeth 

 abound in the north, as also beautiful furs, gold and precious 

 stones. 



OX GRAZING FIFTY YEARS AGO. 



Fifty years ago I saw in Borough Fen, seven miles north of 

 Peterborough, clean and good grazing of a first rate but quite a 

 different system by Mr. John Patrick. I saw as clean, good, and 

 as profitable grazing and the oxen gained weekly as much per 

 head in the neighborhood of Market Harborough, Liecestershire, 

 fifty years ago, upon first rate old grass land, as I have ever seen 

 since in any county in England. Many of those fields were from, 

 fifty to one hundred acres each. Their pastures were kept short 

 until the first of July, when I say short I mean of sufficient length 

 for an ox to fill his belly. * And to keep the said pastures level, 

 sweet and fresh, the ox dung was gathered up weekly '. What said 

 the grazier about it — partly borrowed from Bakewell the Great, in 

 agriculture? Why, that all grass grown before midsummer 

 should either be mowed or kept a proper length by cattle and 

 sheep, as grass, said they wisely ! 



[London Farmers' Magazine, August 1856.] 



GUANO. 



We are forcibly struck by the late comparisons scientifically 

 made between the natural guano and the artificial guano. 



Prof. Cuthbert W. Johnson, stated at Cumberland lately, that 

 all the codfish caught on the great banks of Newfoundland, would 

 only yield about ten thousand tons of imitation guano; whereas 

 last season we received from the Chincha islands only tu-o hundred 

 thousand tons of the natural guano. 



Analysis by Prof. Way of the Royal Agricultural Society and by 

 Prof. Anderson. 



SPRATS. 



Water, 64.60 



Oil, _ 19.50 



Dry nitrogenous matter, 15.90 



