po- 



ises. 



THE ILLINOIS FAEMEE. 



229 



Reaper, who sent to our enterprise Thresher Man- 

 ufacturers, Messrs. Harrison & Co., their agents, a 

 number of these Binders, which being made and 

 warranted by so well established a firm, were taken 

 hold of by our best farmers, and cash orders are 

 now urged upon the agents who are unable to sup- 

 ply any more. We certainly congiatulate our far- 

 mers upon their happy escape from the hardest 

 work of the harvest field. Our farmers will, of 

 course, look out in time for next harvest. — Belle- 

 ville Dem. June LS. 



In a letter from Messrs. Burson, they say, "Di- 

 rect your men in working the binder to be careful 

 to hava the crank in the spring-catch when the 

 lever is raised and lowered, and to always bring 

 the arm entirely down and hold it down while the 

 crank is being turned. The tightening cord will 

 act much more eflfectually upon the green grain if 

 you will tie the cord down close to the offset of 

 the arm and by filing the corner a little and wrap- 

 ping it with wire. We shall in future have two 

 holes, one close to the offset of the arm for green 

 grain, and one back further for ripe light grain." 



We learn that the demand for binders is beyond 

 the supply, and that persons ordering must take 

 their turn. Another year this will not be the case. 



Blood for Manure. 



There is in London what is called the Patent 

 Nitro-Phosphate or Blood Manure Company. It 

 is said to consist of tenant farmers occupying up- 

 ward of 30,000 acres of land. It may have origi- 

 nated in this manner, but we observe in its pres- 

 ent list of trustees the names of several members 

 of Parliament. 



The distinguishing feature claimed for the blood 

 manure is, that while it possesses soluble phos- 

 phates in more than usual abundance, it is incor- 

 porated with a large quantity of animal matter 

 yielding nitrogenous and caibonaceous constitu- 

 ents. It is manufactured by casting the blood in- 

 to Boiling water for the purpose of coagulating it, 

 after which it is pressed and dried making a solu- 

 ble mass. It is sometimes mixed with an equal 

 weight of ashes or the mold, and sometimes ap- 

 plied without mixture at the rate of from two to 

 four hundred pound per acre. It is recommended 

 for wheat, barley, oats, beans, peas, potatoes, 

 grass and turnips. It is said to produce satisfac- 

 tory results. Indeed, on the ground that the 

 chemical analyses of blood and the grain of wheat 

 are nearly identical, it is claimed that blood is the 

 essence of vegetable as well as animal life. 



The company has a monopoly of the blood of 

 the beasts slaughtered in London, from which it 

 secures the annual aggregate of '771,000 gallons. 



In its best form this manure is sold at about 

 thirty-seven and a half dollars per ton, or ten dol- 

 lars higher than the superphosphates of lime. 



A company in Chicago is about undertaking the 

 enterprise of manufacturing a similar product for 

 the English market. — N. W. G. Advocate. 



Clover Hay—How to Cure It. 



= The clovers are justly considered as among the 

 best and most valuable of the cultivated grasses. 



Yet owing to an error in cutting and curing them, 

 a very considerable portion of the rich nutritive 

 matter they contain is lost. I have now a mow 

 of red clover sparsely intermixed with which are 

 small quantities of white clover, red-top and herds 

 grass, which was cut when the honey suckle was 

 in full bloom, and made in grass cock, according 

 to the rules laid down some time since in the col- 

 umns of your paper, for curing this kind of hay. 

 I must say, that although I had not much faith in 

 the matter at first, the result has fully proved the 

 correctness of the writers views, and that I no 

 longer doubt the theory upon which the practice is 

 based. 



If clover is cut when in bloom, and permitted 

 to remain undisturbed in the swath till the fore- 

 noon of the second day, and then turned, expos- 

 ing the under and un wilted side to the sun for a 

 a few hours, and then pitched into cocks of sixty 

 pounds weight, cured hay, and there allowed to 

 stand till cured, the hay will be heavier, brighter, 

 of better flavor, and possessed of fai- greater nour- 

 ishment than hay of the same kind made in the 

 ordinary manner. The leaves and fine heads, 

 which are inevitably lost by drying in the ordinary 

 way, in consequence of their brittleness when 

 dried, are in this way preserved. The flavor of 

 the hay is also vastly superior. One ton of good 

 clover made in this way, is worth, for feeding, two 

 tons dried in the old way, and deprived by turn- 

 ing, spreading and filching, of its heads and leaves. 

 The fermentation which it undergoes in the cock 

 is never sufficiently vigorous to dissipate any of 

 the alimentary properties, and is rarely sufficient 

 to be perceptible by the hand. That the heat is 

 very moderate is sufficiently attested by the fact 

 that the color, not only of the foliage, which is 

 naturally of a deep and vivid green, but the bright 

 crimson of the flowers is retained, which would 

 not be the case were the fermentation as vigorous 

 as many would lead us to believe. Any grass 

 cured in this way will be more nutritive, of better 

 color and greater weight than the same grass made , 

 in the old way. — Cor. Germaniown Tel. 



Good Tillage is Manure, f. 



Farmers do not generally realize the fact, that 

 good clean tillage is about equal to an application of 

 manure to lands slovenly cultivated. We all 

 know how much larger crops we realize in the 

 garden than upon the farm,' just from the superior 

 attention paid to it in cleansing the ground of all 

 noxious vegetation and frequently hoeing and oth- 

 erwise stirring the soil. The Genesee Farmer 

 makes some useful remarks on this subject, as fol- 

 lows: 



"We must more than ever before, realize the 

 fact that 'tillage is manure' — that the literal mean- 

 ing of the word 'manure' {nianiis, hand, and ouvrer, 

 to work,) is hand labor. To manure the land is to 

 hoe, to dig, to stir the soil, to expose it to the at- 

 mosphere, to plow, to harrow, to cultivate. The 

 ancient Romans made Stercutius a god because he 

 discovered that the droppings of animals had the 

 same effect in enriching the soil as to hoe it. We 

 can leave the modern method of manuring land to;, 

 our Western farmers, while we go back to the 

 original method of stirring the soil. Mr. Lawes 

 has raised a good crop of wheat every season for 

 over twenty years on the same land, by simply 



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