636 Transactions ot the American Institute. 



AYuiTE Beans — How Planted, 



Mr. Joel Zook, Madisonburg, asked : " Should the common wliite 

 bean be planted in hills ? If so, how far apart each way, and how 

 many to a hill ? Or shonld they be sown broadcast ? What time 

 shonld they be planted ? Are they as profitable as a crop of potatoes ? 



Mr. W. S. Carpenter. — I have planted them occasionally. AVe 

 plant beans at the times we ])lant Indian corn, never broadcast. We 

 cover them with the plow the same as Indian corn. The yield is 

 thirty bushels to tlie acre when it is good. We do not consider tliem 

 as proiitable as potatoes. Last year they commanded from four to 

 five dollars a bushel. 



Mr. A. S. Fuller. — But he may be a long way from market, and 

 so the beans may be more profitable than potatoes. The profit 

 depends upon where he is located ; the former are more easily trans- 

 ported than the latter. 



Mr. S. Edwards Todd. — There is one point in regard to the prepa- 

 ration of the soil. The true management is to work over the land 

 three or four times and destroy as many as three crops of weeds 

 before they are put in. In June put them in with a drill by stopping 

 up every other tube. We put the rows about sixteen or eighteen 

 inches apart, and then the crop comes up so quickly and gets such a 

 start of the weeds that all necessity for hoeing is avoided. 



The Ageicultueal Peess. 



Mr. S. Edwards Todd then proceeded to read a paper upon " The 

 Spirit of the Agricultural Press then and now " : 



About thirty or forty years ago a j^rinted article on an agricultural 

 subject was looked upon with no little amazement. Indeed, an 

 attempt to instruct and aid the tillers of the soil through the medium 

 of the press was scarcely thought of. The only agricultural periodi- 

 cals in the whole country were the Genesee Farmer, Pochester, 

 ]Sr. Y., edited by the present senior editor of the Country Gentleman^ 

 and Tlie Cultivator, published at Alban}^, by Hon. Jesse Buel. In 

 many instances the farmer who received an agricultural paper was 

 reproached with the taunting epithet of a " book farmer." Nothing 

 seemed to strike the tiller 'of the soil as a topic so superlatively ridi- 

 culous and absurd as an attempt to instruct a farmer in the art ol 

 raising grain or breeding domestic animals through the medium of 

 the press. Go to the library of the American Institute and examine 

 the old volumes of these two illustrious pioneers, the Genesee Farmer 



