108 



THE ILLINOIS FAEMER. 



Apeil 



again plowed and harrowed, and rows marked 

 north and south three and a half to four feet, 

 and places prepared with a hoe two feet apart on 

 the rows, for setting the plant. The first wet 

 day after the ground is prepared should be im- 

 proved in transplanting. This process is most 

 important of all, and, I shall, therefore, be par- 

 ticular in its description. The plants should be 

 moved while the bed is wet, by inserting a small 

 iron instrument to the depth of the root, gently 

 loosening it, until it can be easily drawn out. 

 They are then trant-fered to the field, and by 

 means of a round pointed wood instrument one 

 inch in diameter, a hole is made some four or 

 five inches deep in the place prepared, into 

 which the root is inserted and the earth tressed 

 firmly together around it. During the season of 

 its growth the field be kept clean with the hoe as 

 long as there is space to work round the plants. 

 I have thus far l)een minute in describing the 

 process, hoping to assist any unacquainted with 

 the crop and its mode of management iiho may 

 feel disposed to make the trial this season. In a 

 subsequent article, with your permission, I will 

 give your readers the mode of maturing the plant 

 for harvestiag, and the subsequent management 

 of curing and preparing it for market. Also 

 directions for the erection of cheap and con- 

 venient fixtures for the purpose. 



Seed Leaf. 



-<•»- 



Plant an Apple Obchard. — This is the ad- 

 vice given by an agricultural exchange. Plant 

 an apple orchard. The old ones are fast dying 

 out all through the older States. They were 

 planted a hundred years ago, or more, have 

 done good service, and ought to have their day. 

 When apples are three dollars a bushel and up- 

 ward, there is not an adequate supply in the 

 country. They can be grown at a dollar a bar- 

 rel, with profit. The apple crop in a single 

 small county in this State, was worth half a 

 million of dollars last year. Other counties in 

 the older parts of the Eastern States, were un- 

 der the necessity of paying out a hundred thou- 

 sand dollars for this fruit, because they had not 

 the article at home. Peaches and plums we 

 may be able to gf t along withou*, but apples wo 

 must have — for sauce, for pies, for the desert, 

 and for the dinner basket of little boys and 

 girls who can not come home from school to 

 dine. We say then to every farmer, plant an 

 orchard of at least a hundred trees. The trees 

 are all ready for you at the nursery, well grown 

 and grafted, two and three years from the bud. 

 Get thrifty trees, of varieties that you know will 

 flourish in your locality, and in four years yon 

 will be eating fruit from them. Do not fail to 

 plant an orchard this very month. 



"Let the thoughts of a crucified Christ," said 

 one, " be never out of your mind." Let them 

 be your sweetness and consolation, your honey 

 and jour desiie, your reading and your medi- 

 jtatioD, jour life, death, and resurrectioD. 



id No. 10. I 



i,1862 J 



Nine Days on a Gun Boat— Gun Boat 



Mound City— A Novel Sanctum— The 



Armament and Arrangement— Our 



War Experience. 



On Boabd GtJN Boat Mound City, 

 Mississippi river, at Siege of Islanc 

 Wednesday, March 18, 



The readers of the Farmer must excuse us for 

 giving them a chapter of active war news in 

 place of the usual agricultural subjects. To 

 write of the culture of the soil, amid the booming 

 of cannon, the loud bellowing of the huge mor- 

 tars, and the excitement of the siege, which is 

 now in progress in its fifth day, is out of the 

 question. We will, therefore, draw on our note 

 book for the past five days. 



THE MOUND CITY. 



We went on board this boat the 9th inst., and 

 have had an opportunity to learn something of 

 river naval warfare, especially when five days of 

 it have been spent inactive service. The length 

 of the boat is about one hundred and seventy 

 feet with a width of fifty feet, tapering but little 

 towards the ends, which present a screw appear- 

 ance. There is no beauty in the form of these 

 boats ; their hulls are sunk to the water's edge, 

 while the gun room on deck is roofed over with 

 heavy oak timber, which, for the most part is 

 covered with long narrow iron plates, 'ay an inch 

 and a halt thick and eight inches wide. She 

 draws seven feet of water, thus putting her boil- 

 ers and machinery below the water line, though 

 exposed to a plunging shot from above or through 

 her port holes. The gun deck is six and a half 

 feet in the clear, lighted from above by sky- 

 lights. What with port holes, plunging shot and 

 sky-lights for the ingress of stray shot, we do 

 not consider this so safe as our own f anctum, for 

 while writing a stray shot may enter one of the 

 forward ports, from which the iron messenger of 

 death are now being sent to the enemy, traverse 

 the gun room, lay waste the slight partition of 

 the ward room in which we now write, and cut 

 short our scribbling. Yet this has been our liv' 

 ing room, located within range of the enemies 

 batteries for the past four days. Our dependence 

 is not so much on the solid defences of the oak 

 and iron as upon its ability to glance off the 

 balls, and thus turn them harmless from their 

 course. A conical shot from an eight inch rifled 

 cannon at a mile range, should it not glance o£f, 

 would pass through this iron sheeting and band 

 of solid oak as though it was pasteboard. Our 

 safety then, depends upon the glancing of the 

 shot. 



