12 



THE ILLINOIS FARMER. 



Jan. 



The Real Sovereign States. 



The Fix Middle States of this Confederacy are 

 obviously destined to control the country. Thej 

 confirm the deductions of many philosophical 

 historians, who say that mankind instinctively 

 seeks the regions where climatic conditions com- 

 bine with a fertile soil to make agriculture the 

 most profitable. The census of 1860 demonstrates 

 that the white population is tending toward the 

 Middle States. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, 

 mini is, Missouri and Iowa, not to mendon parts 

 of New York and Virginia, now contain more 

 than one-third of the white population of the 

 thirty-nine States and Territories. These six 

 States numbT ten million one hundred and three 

 thousand five hundred and seventy-three souls. 

 Forty-one per cent, of the entire increase of the 

 country in the last ten years was made within 

 their limits. While the six New England Stat s, 

 which set out in 1850 with 2,728,116 have only 

 increased 400,520, or fourteen and a half per 

 cent., the Middle Stntes have run up from 

 5,9i8,985 in 1850, lo 10,103,573 persons in 1860. 



Certain scientific men have predicied that the 

 best of land extending from the Atlantic to 

 the Missouri river, between the 38th and 42J 

 parallels, would eventully be the garden of this 

 continent. Its climate, removed alike from the 

 rigors of the winter in the more northern States, 

 and the oppressive heat of summer in the more 

 southern, has proved to be the most healthful 

 and the best adapted to our principal agricultu^ 

 ral staples. West of the Mississippi river, on 

 these parallels, is Kansas atd Nebraska, which 

 are fertile in parts, but too near ihe great de- 

 sert of perpetual drought. The quantity of rain 

 averages there les-s than one-third of the antiual 

 falltin the State easts of the Mississippi ; hence 

 the crops are precarious and scanty ; snd Iowa 

 seems to be the western boundaij of the mobt 

 desirable agricultural land of the continent. 



IlliiKii-, tne I'^sl settled of the States east of 

 the Mississippi, leads them all in the wonderful 

 progress of the last decade. She has gained 

 839^708 in population, and the prairie lands have 

 quadrupled in value. By the opening of rail- 

 way greater wealth of agr cultural product has 

 been developed there than in any other State. 

 Thesf farts h.ve a bearing, also, upon the puliti- 

 cal condition of the nation, and particularly upon 

 its c di nil D the future, which wise statesmen 

 have not, or at least ought not, to overlook. — 

 N. Y. Fost. 



Stocking^ fob the Army. — The Seneca Falls 

 Rexei le states that the Seneca Knitting Mills, 

 now erigag. d on government contracts, ennploy 

 between three and four thousand men and wo 

 men, and ytt this force is inadequate to meet 

 the demand. Orders for many thousand pairs 

 of stockings have been turned away, and have 

 gone elsewhere. The company have ordered a 

 large amount of new machinery, suflBcient to 

 increase tho capacity of ihe mills at least one- 

 third. 



Bleeding Cattle in Spring. 



Mr. John Johnson has favored the Rural New 

 Yorker with (he following correspondence for 

 publication. It will be read with interest by 

 many of our readers. 



The following is a copy of a letter received by 

 Mr. Johnson, some four weeks ago, from a stran- 

 ger : 



Sie: — I would like your opinion in regard to 

 the common practice in many portions of the 

 country, of cutting or slitting the tails of cattle. 

 Do you consider it beneficial, injurious or use- 

 less, and, if either, will you be kind enough to 

 give me your reasons? Do you ever rradieit? 

 If so, at any special period of the year, and your 

 method ef doing it ? Would you advise me to do 

 it at this time of the year, if you approve of it 

 at all.' I have forty thr* e year ild steers 

 in fine condition, and not fancying the prac- 

 tif-e, did not operate on them in the spring ; but 

 have been urgently advised to do so by several 

 friends. If demands on your time and patience 

 are not too great, I should be very of your opin- 

 ion, which will much oblige. 

 Yours, &c.. 



The following is the answer to the foregoing: 

 Dear Sir : — I have received yours of the 

 20th inst. respecting the tails of cattle. Bleed- 

 ing cattle in spring, either by neck, vein or 

 by cutting their tails, has been practiced by 

 many stock keepers ever since I remember any- 

 thing, and that is over sixty years. I have owned 

 and kept cattle all of fifty years, but never have 

 made a practice of bleeding any animal unless it 

 was sick, as I consider the wholesale bleeding of 

 cattle in spring useless and barbarous. What 

 would you think of a man who wouli call in his 

 family physician every spring and have his wliole 

 family bled? Yet that would be no more absurd 

 than the indiscriminate bleeding of his cattle 

 every spring. If men would always do by their 

 domestic animals as they would wish to bu done 

 by, if ;hey were in their place, with regard to 

 feeding during the winter and spring, they would 

 not think they required bleeding in spring in or- 

 der to IT ake them thrive. The practice must 

 have originated in the dark agts and has nearly 

 become extinct, as not one in twenty, or I might 

 say fifty, bleeds his cattle now unless sick, while 

 forty years ago, a vast majority did. I think 

 they must a'so have given up that practice in 

 both England Scotland, as I hear nothing of it 

 from the last importations from my native coun- 

 try. Yours respeotfully, 



John Johnson. 



-«•»- 



—Boys if you don't want to fall in love, keep 

 away from muslin. You can no more play 

 with those girls without losing your hearts, than 

 you can play with gamblers without losing your 

 money. The heart-strings of a woman, like the 

 tendrils of a vine, are always reaching out for 

 something to cling to. The consequence is, 

 that before you are going you are "gone," like 

 a lot at an auction. 



