642 Transactions of the American Institute. 



fresh excrescence should bfe pared off, the turpentine applied, and it 



will harden in a week." 



Adjourned. 



March 30, 1869. 



Mr. Nathan C. Ely in the chair; Mr. John W. Chambers, Secretary. 



"When to Sow Clover. 



Mr. J. D. Ackerman, Union City, Mich.— I wish to ask the Farmers' 

 Club if it will do to sow clover about the middle of June with buck- 

 wheat, and get a good catch. I have a field I wish to seed ; the land 

 is too wet to get in proper condition early enough for oats. 'Would 

 it do any better with Hungarian grass ? 



Mr. S. E. Todd.— Somehow all the farmers have got the idea fast 

 in their heads that there is no sowing grass or clover Beed without 

 they sow it with some kind of grain. I thought so once, but after a 

 good many years I found out my mistake. Grass does better sowed 

 by itself. But the ground should be well prepared, plowed, cross- 

 plowed, harrowed and bushed till it is as smooth as a garden^ bed. 

 The time of sowing is not so important as the mode of preparing a 

 seed bed. Perhaps the best time to get clover into wheat or rye, and 

 especially wheat, is early in the spring when the surface is soft with 

 the coming out of the frost. 



Mr. W. S. Carpenter. — I have sowed clover as late as the 1st of 

 June, with good results. 



Tamestg the Buffalo. 

 Mr. Y. Devinny, Denver city, Colorado Territory.— I perceive by 

 the reports of the Farmers' Club that ths merits of the American 

 buffalo have been lately discussed ; the subject having been brought 

 Tip by a letter from Jessie Felt. E"ow I wish to say that I fully cor- 

 roborate the facts of that letter, and consider it both timely and 

 important. It seems that the suggestions of the club were averse to 

 the domestication of the buffalo; on3' member asserting that "it 

 requires a fence eight feet high to keep them in their fields." This 

 might often be said of the domesticated cattle and sheep. I have 

 Been twenty tame bufialoes confined in a field of poor pasture by a 

 fence four feet high. Mr. Greeley asserts that " the meat tasted like 

 half boiled chips when he eat it on the plains." But as there is a 

 reason for everything under the ^un, there may be a cause for the 



