THE IIL-LINOIS irA.R]MER. 



203 



the younger progeny, -who in turn take 

 their place, Tvhile they commence to 

 labor out-of-doors, collecting honey, 

 pollen, or propolis. 



M. M. Baldeidge. 

 Middleport, Niagara county, N. Y. 



«•»«- 



Farming ih 1860. 

 Our lines, my friends, have fallen in 

 pleasant places. We occupy, for the 

 most part, genial soils ; we enjoy a cli- 

 mate healthful and invigorating. The 

 snow in winter, and that winter prolong- 

 ed beyond that of many favored sec- 

 tions of our country, it builds up robust 

 men and women, nurses their faculties 

 until a sufficient manhood or womanhood 

 shall expand their action into the larg- 

 est capacity for usefulness in whatever 

 sphere of life they may engage. We 

 raise the fruits of the earth in all the 

 variety which our climate will admit, 

 and by our ingenuity and invention win 

 over the elements to assist in giving us 

 many luxuries native only to the sunny 

 south, far down toward the tropics. We 

 have conquered the hard sterility of our 

 lands in the scantiness of their natural 

 productions, and strewed their surface 

 with teeming harvests once thought al- 

 most impossible for them to yield, while 

 our enterprising citizens have disembow- 

 eled our hills and mountains of their 

 minerals, and turned our water courses 

 into a manipulating power, which mill- 

 ions of sledge hammers and more than 

 millions of spinning wheels and looms 

 directed only by human bands could but 

 faintly work in their productive power, 

 our agriculture has silently yet steadily 

 progressed in improvement. Our fath- 

 ers delved and toiled with uncouth tools, 

 tilling the soil imperfectly and obtain- 

 ing, unless in remarkably favorable lo- 

 calities, small crops. We, by the aid of 

 improved implements, work the soil bet- 

 ter. We apply our manures with more 

 system, distribute them over a wider sur- 

 face, plow our lands deeper, cultivate 

 them more skillfully, and obtain, of 

 course, better crops than they. They 

 performed more hand-labor ; we labor 

 more by machinery, and work that ma- 

 chinery by horses or oxen. Could some 

 of our revolutionary veterans — Stark or 

 Putnam, for example — men who them- 

 selves held the plow in those days of 

 rugged, toil — now revisit the pleasant 

 fields which they once cultivated and 

 witness the mower and the reaper cut- 

 ting merrily over the fields, and the 

 horse-pitching forks, and sheaf-binders, 

 and the threshing machines, all making 

 boy's play of what to them was the 

 realized penalty of tne sentence upon 

 our first parents in Paradise — " by the 

 sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy 

 bread'' — how they would throw up their 

 hands in astonishment at the changes 

 which have been wrought among us ! 



They would scarcely believe their senses, 

 so marked have been the changes in our 

 systems of labor, and the application of 

 mechanical and animal power to our ag- 

 riculture. — Allen'' 8 Address at Troy. 



■—*- 



[From the Country Gentleman and Cultivator .J 



My Experience In Using Farm Grain lllills. 



As I live five miles from a good grist 

 mill, I have been trying for eighteen 

 years to get a farm mill with which I 

 would be able to grind coarse grain for 

 feed. I have expended a great deal of 

 time and money in getting such mills, 

 and in experimenting with them, and 

 have thrown them all aside as non-pay- 

 ing, profitless machinery; and I now 

 haul all my grain five miles, and back 

 again, to have it well ground, rather 

 than to attempt to grind it in such 

 worthless pepper mills. 



My first effort in starting a farm mill 

 was a very unsatisfactory one. I sent 

 to New York citv for a two-horse mill, 

 that was warranted to grind from six to 

 eight bushels of feed per hour. The 

 price was $24. I used it until I was 

 well satisfied that with two horses, work- 

 ing very hard, it would about half grind 

 from three to four bushels in one hour; 

 and judging from the rapid rate at which 

 it wore out, if would grind probably one 

 or two hundred bushels. This was cast 

 aside as anon-paying operation. 



The next season I saw another mill 

 advertised, and well endorsed. I imme- 

 diately sent for one. They were said to 

 be "made of the very best composition 

 metal, and cast in a chill,'' so that they 

 would grind a vast amount of grain be- 

 fore they were worn out. I put it to a 

 most thorough test; but before I ground 

 eight bushels, I found that the grinding 

 surfaces were made of the very softest 

 kind of cast-iron, and wore out so rapidly 

 that I could not get one bushel of grain 

 through it in one hour, grinding only 

 half as fine as it should be ground. — 

 This was immediately thrown aside 

 among the old iron. 



I then tested a two-horse mill called 

 the Coleman farm-mill. Several other 

 farmers in this region have tested the 

 same mill; all came to the same conclu- 

 sion, that it is hard work for a span of 

 horses to grind four or five bushels per 

 hour, and that it will not grind as fine 

 as meal should be ground for feeding 

 any kind of stock. Each of these mills 

 were driven by a railway horse-power. 



The next mill that I tried was the 

 Joyce Star Mill- — a tub-mill — which is 

 driven by hitching the team to a lever. 

 This mill came to hand with a long list 

 of very responsible endorsers, and was 

 "warranted to grind ten bushels of corn- 

 ears per hour." It was said to have 

 been cast on a chill, to make the grind- 

 ing surfaces as hard as they could be 

 I made. But I found that they were al- 



most as soft as zinc. I tested it with a 

 determination to like it; but it would not 

 grind fine enough, and would not grind 

 the grain evenly, and was very hard 

 work for a team, and could not possibly 

 be made to grind even one- third as much 

 as as it was warranted to grind. When 

 it was set to grind so fine that it would 

 answer for horsc^feed — but not for cat- 

 tle and hogs — it would grind about two 

 bushels per hour. Of course that is 

 thrown aside. 



Last season an agent brought to my 

 barn a grain-mill which I know to be a 

 good thing. It was manufactured by 

 Downs & Co. , Seneca Falls, N. Y. The 

 grinding surfaces are chilled, and every 

 part of it is made as it should be. My 

 wife made biscuit of the flour which was 

 ground in it; and she, nor no one else 

 could distinguish the difference between 

 food made of flour ground in this mill 

 and flour made at the grist mill. The 

 price was too exorbitant— $100— or I 

 should have kept it* 



S. Edwards Todd. 



Lake lUdge, Thompkiiu Co., N. T. 



Remarks. — We give the above our 

 hearty endorsement. We have no faith 

 in the value of cobs ground up with 

 the corn, and when meal is wanted, we 

 do not think it will pay any farmer to 

 use these so-called farm-mills, when he 

 is within a reasonable distance of a steam 

 or water mill using the burr stone. Ev- 

 ery farmer growing a reasonable amount 

 of corn should have a good hand or horse 

 power sheller. These are to be had 

 cheap, atid they shell and separate the 

 com ready for market. Adams & 

 Co., of Sandwich, DeKalb county, 

 make the best we have seen. — [Ed. 



A Snre Remedy for a Felon. : 



This very painful eruption, with all 

 the " remedies recommended,'' is seldom 

 arrested until it has run a certain course, 

 after causing great suffering for two or 

 three days and nights. The following 

 remedy is vouched for by the Buffalo 

 AdjVocatey as a certain thing from its 

 own knowledge : " Take a pint of com- 

 mon soap and stir in air-slacked lime 

 till it is of the consistency of glazier's 

 putty. Make a leather thimble, fill it 

 with this composition, and insert the 

 finger therein, and a cure is certain." 

 This is a domestic application that every 

 housekeeper can apply promptly. 



[From the Philadelphia Ledger, Oct. 11, 1S59.] 



A UsKFCL Abicle. — A new and useful article, 

 called Spalding's Prepared Glue, has been in- 

 troduced to the notice of housekeepers. It is 

 reliable and really adhesive, and enables every 

 housekeeper to repair furniture and household 

 ware without trouble, as it is always ready for 



use. 



