AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 221 



grindstones, go to market witli 20 wagons of produce, laaul back manure, 

 go on the farm and scatter it, then plow it in, drive the washing machine, 

 drop hay, cornstalks, straw, turnips, and everything else; heat all the 

 water, drive swinging fans to dry cloths or cool your rooms, go to the forest 

 and cut down trees and pull up the stumps, saw up the logs, hoist them 

 on to cars and haul them home, &c., &c., and if the owner cannot employ 

 it all the time he can hire out his mechanic mammoth, to his neighbors, so 

 that it need never be idle. 



Boydell's Traction engine is now employed on the highways carrying 

 coal to Manchester for two pence per ton per mile. 



SICKLY PLUM TREES. 



The Pennsylvania Farmer now says that salt freely applied to the sur- 

 face of the ground around the tree, and over an area as wide as the extent 

 of its branches, and strong brine to wash the trunk and limbs, and pul- 

 verize salt in a hole bored into the tree to its centre, and plugged up, are 

 all of them certain means of restoring the tree to health, and trees sickly 

 or enfeebled, troubled with curculio, bug or black wart, are brought up to 

 a healthy condition. That the plum is naturally a marine tree, and it is 

 surprising how much salt it will assimilate and thrive on. 



[Prairie Farmer, Chicago, Illinois, July 21, 1859.] 

 The U. S. Agricultural Society offer their grand gold medal of honor for 

 that machine which shall supersede the plow, as now used, and accomplish 

 the most thorough disintegration of the soil, with the greatest economy of 

 labor, power, and time and money. (The American Institute now offers a 

 thousand dollars.) 



CLEAN ALL YOUR SEEDS. 



The Wisconsin Farmer, July, '59, Madison, says : 



" Professor Buckman, of England, has recently made some careful 

 investigations as to the amount of seeds of weeds contained in seeds sold 

 as clean. He found in one pint of clover seed 7,600 weed seeds ; of cow 

 grass 12,600 ; of brood clover 39,444. Of two pints of Dutch clover, one 

 of the pints had 25,560 weed seeds, the other 70,400 weed seeds. The 

 fecundity of some weeds is truly astonishing. The Professor counted 

 8,000 seeds in one black mustard plant, 4,000 in a charlock, 46,000 in 

 a stinking camomile, 26,000 in one common burdock. 



[California (San Francisco,) Culturist, July, 1859.] 

 FORAGE OP THE PACIFIC. 



No one can deny that, however humbling it may be to our State pride 

 in regard to agricultural resources, the question as to how her future herds 

 of cattle and horses are to be supported, is becoming of grave import, 

 owing to the frequent want of forage during the dry, parched and cheerless 

 condition of summer and autumn. Few countries have better natural pas- 

 ture grasses than our indigenous soils. We must introduce and test for- 

 eign grasses. 



