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THE ILLI^STOIS FARMER. 



14:9 



Large Farms. a 



The very hurtful tendency that has been 

 so prevalent among our farmers in time past, 

 to attempt to sepure too much land, is at the 

 present time very much on the wane, and 

 those who are now opening farms as a gene- 

 ral thing purchase pieces much nearer the 

 mark designated by economy. The reason 

 for this is two-fold : — in the first place the 

 enhanced price of land causes the manage- 

 ment of very much of it to he attended with 

 pretty heavy cash responsibility, and the pay- 

 ment of more interest and taxes than most 

 of our farmers care about meeting, and in 

 the second place men are becoming aware of 

 the truth that much money is wasted in the 

 attempt to manage too large a farm, and that 

 a small piece under high cultivation makes 

 much better cash returns than a vovy large 

 one poorly managed. 



More than this, we venture to prophecy 

 that not only most of the farms opened in the 

 future will be comparatively small, but that 

 before a great many years numbers of the 

 huge tracts of prairie now held by single in- 

 dividuals will divided up among numbers of 

 men who do not care to spread themselves 

 quite so extensively. We do not refer so 

 much to the land held by non-resident specu- 

 lators, which will of course come on the mar- 

 ket sooner or later, as to the possessions of 

 those men who have an ambition to hold and 

 cultivate a large estate after the !=tyle of the 

 old country aristocracy. This is not the 

 country for such things, and no one need fear 

 that they will ever flourish. — Urhana Con- 

 st itutionist. 



-*•*- 



Smut in Wlicat— Ilie Reracdv. 



I will state to your readers, what I suppose 

 to be the cause of smut in wheat, and like- 

 wise, what I Jcnoio to be a prevention. I 

 have supposed that pure wheat, like various 

 other productions of the earth, might degen- 

 erate and produce smut, or, tliat owing to 

 some casuality, it might fail to blossom, 

 and produce smut. These causes, acting 

 separately or conjointly, may be the first 

 moving cause of smut, while sjnut itself, be- 

 ing an efiicient agent in propagating ita kind, 

 becomes the continuing cause. 



When I was a boy, I one day observed my 

 father washing wheat to sow. I asked him 

 why he did thus. He repUed to rid itof smut. 

 I observed that, after he had skimmed oif all 

 the balls of smut from the first water, he 

 washed it thoroughly in the second and third 

 waters. I asked him why he washed it so 

 much after he had taken off all the kernels 

 of smut. He replied, that particles of smut, 

 adhering to the wheat, will cause it to pro- 

 duce smut. Young as I was, I had imbibed 

 the idea that smut germinated, and was too 

 incredulous to relinquish my notion on the 

 subject. To satisfy myself, I took a number 

 of balls of smut, rubbed them in my hand, 

 and added a handfull of washed wheat. On 

 one side of the field, where pure wheat had 

 been sown, I sowed what I had prepared, 

 and, boy-like, rolled it in with stone. At 

 harvest, I had a fine crop of smut, while the 

 adjoining wheat was entirely free from it. I 

 then felt that inexperience should not be too 

 confident. 



In the course of time, I contracted with a 

 gentleman to take charge of his farm. When 



seeding time came, I could not conveniently 

 obtain any other than smutty wlioat for seed. 

 My employer was not slow to condemn tliis 

 ''mess of smut." I told him perhaps I might 

 be able to teach him a ''thing or two," con- 

 cerning smut. I washed this wheat thor- 

 oughly, sowed it, and raised, e^xccllcnt pure 

 wheat. From the result of the first experi- 

 ment, it appears reasonable to Infer that smut 

 does not germinate, bat bv adhering to the 

 wheat, contaminates or diseases its roots and 

 blades, imparts to them a vitiating principle, 

 which prevents]^the head from producing a 

 sound grain. This is proved, as there was 

 no kernel of smut in the seed sown, and as 

 there was nothing but pulverized smut in it, 

 the smut must have been produced by some 

 process similar to that above described. The 

 result of the second experiment proves that 

 if smutty wheat be washed, smut will be pre- 

 vented. — Soutlicru Jlomesfead. 



Rust in Oats — What is it? 



Throughout the whole Southwestern por- 

 tion of the Union the oat crop has sufi"cred 

 from a terrible blight, which, from its resem- 

 blance to the fungous substance that some- 

 times attacks wheat by that name, has been 

 called RUST. So far as we are informed, 

 rust in oats has hitherto been unknown. We 

 have never lieard or read of anything of the 

 kind, in any section of the country. The 

 fact that it is thus unusual, opens a wide and 

 interesting field to the naturalist, and in this 

 case, to the entomologist, as it invites investi- 

 gation in a channel, so far as wc can ascer- 

 tain, hitherto unexplored. 



While in West Tennessee, a short time 

 since, we took occasion to examine the blade 

 of the oat under a miscroscope ( kindl}- furnish- 

 ed us by the Baily Troupe,) and were greatly 

 suprised with the phenomenon which the 

 crla.-^s revealed. Since then, we have follow- 

 ed up these examinations,' by the aid of more 

 powerful instruments, at the Medical College 

 in this city, in company with several scien- 

 tific gentlemen, among whom were Doctors 

 Bri<(2;s and Buchanan, of the Medical Fac- 

 ulty. 



The cause of all this destruction of the oat 

 crop is a living worm, too small to be seen 

 plainly with the naked eye. A single blade 

 or leaf of the oat sometimes contains hundreds 

 of them. They lie encased in the tis.'>ues of 

 the leaf or blade where they have been ger- 

 miiiatcd, beneath the epidermis or thin pelli- 

 cle over the exterior portion of the blade, and 

 as they progress in developiuent, the skin of 

 the leaf shows curious puffy blisters. The 

 growth of the worm subsequently ruptures 

 these, and it escapes to feed on tlie jilant. 

 When first, released irom their covering, they 

 are of a beautiful, clear, red color, almost 

 transparent, but soon begin to change coli)r 

 and form, and getting more opaque and dark 

 in appearance until, in the cour.se of transfor- 

 mation, tlic}^ become a black bug, with logs 

 and wings, when they attack the head or grain 

 of the oats. 



Under the miscroscope, the dust which re- 

 mains on the leaf, closely resembles that on 

 the winu's of butterflies. ' 



flow this immvaerable arniy of infinite 

 small worms originated is yet a mystcr}-. It 

 is a singular fact, however that wherever the 

 greatest quantity of rain has fallen, there the 



oat crop has fared the worst. In our recent 

 trip through West Tennessee, wo saw but a 

 single field of oats, between the Mississippi 

 and Tennessee rivers, which was not a total 

 failure, or in which it ■rt'ould be folly to put a 

 scythe-blade. That field was near Denmark, 

 in jNIadisou county, and was sown very early. 

 It is well known, that more rain has fallen in 

 West Tennessee, this season, than in any oth- 

 er part of the State; hence the extreme wet 

 weather must have had some agency in the 

 production of this animalcula?. It is also 

 well known that moisture and heat will pro- 

 duce and multiply animal life, millions per 

 hour, and therein we judge is the secret of this 

 destruction of the oat crop. It is one of those 

 cases of natural phenomena which occur only 

 at a certain stage in the growth of plants, 

 and under peculiar states of temperature. It 

 may happen next season, or it may not occur 

 again for many ycars.^ — Southern Home- 

 Mead.' 



—f 



Deep Plowing. \ 



Question. — At what period of the year o"f 

 rotation would deep plowing be advisable? 

 What kinds of soil does it benefit, and when 

 should be avoided? 



Avsiver. — Deep plowing Is most effective 

 in the autumn, thus exposing the influence 

 of frosty rain, and wind during the winter, 

 which act upon the mineral ingredients of 

 the soil, rendering them available for the 

 succeeding crops, and pulverizing the soil, 

 and thus facilitating the passage of the soils 

 into the subsoil. As regards the period of 

 the rotation it is generally considered that 

 deep cultivation is most beneficial after the 

 wheat crop, as a preparation for the root crop 

 and the whole succeeding rotation it is deem- 

 ed advisable that the land receive a deeper 

 stirring than would be considered safe or ex- 

 pedient iu preparation for a corn crop, in or- 

 der to disturb the hard impenetrable stratum 

 formed by the continuous treading of horses 

 and the passage of the plow, and also to bring 

 to the surface a fresh portion of unexhausted 

 sod to be incorporated with that from which 

 the previous rotation has derived its nourish- 

 ment. Moreover, the first crop which follows 

 requires a deep well pulverized soil; a soil, in 

 fact, which will offer as little resistance as 

 possible to the expansion of the bulbs. — 

 Therefore, taking all these things into con- 

 sideration, we conclude that the most suita- 

 ble time for deep plowing is in the autumn, 

 previous to the root crop, or for the bare fal- 

 low after a corn crop, in cases where the soil 

 is unsuited for the root crop. 



The soils most benefitted by deep cultiva- 

 tion are stiff clay lands, those soils resting 

 immediately upon rock cannot be subsoiled 

 even if were desirable, which is very doubt- 

 ful. As a rule, we may say, plow deep, when 

 the subsoil is of the same character as the 

 surface, if both are tenacious, or when the 

 subsoil is composed of good clay, only re- 

 quiring atmospheric influence to sweeten it. . 

 Deep cultivation should be avoided when 

 preparing for com, either for barley after 

 roots fed oft", in which case we should by deep 

 plowing bury the manure beyond the reach 

 of the crop, and in plowing the clover lea for 

 wheat it would be especially injurious. In 

 underdrained clays deep plowing would be 

 objectionable. Deep plowing benefits most 



