1S0S.1 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
179 
sell straw. Better buy oil-cake, aud feed stock 
enough in the winter to consume all the straw, 
hay, corn stalks, etc., on the farm. This is what 
I preach, ami this is what I practise as far as I 
can. I have laid out over $3000 in the purchase 
of oil-cake, bone-dust, and other manures, during 
the last four years, and have not sold, to the best 
of my recollection, a ton of straw, or hay, or corn 
stalks before. To feed nothing but straw to 
stock is bad economy, and to rot it down for 
manure is no better. Straw itself is not worth 
over $3 per ton for manure. And as one ton of 
straw will make in the spring of the year four 
tons of so-called manure, and as it costs about 
50 cmts a ton to draw it. out and spread it, it 
only nets you, when fed out alone or rotted 
down, about $1 a ton. I had about 30 tons of 
straw. Fed out alone or rotted down it would 
make 120 tons of manure. After deducting the 
expense of filling, hauling, and spreading, it nets 
me <>n the land, $30. Now sell half the straw 
for $100 and buy three tons of oil-cake to feed 
out with the other half, and you would have 
about seventy tons of manure. The manure 
from the fifteen tons of straw is worth, say $15, 
and from the three tonsof oil-cake, $00, or$105. 
It will cost $35 to draw and spread it, and will 
thus net on the land $70. So far as the manure 
question is concerned, therefore, it is far better 
to sell half your straw and buy oil-cake with the 
money than to feed it out alone — and I think it 
is also far better for the stock. Of course, it 
■would be better for the farm not to sell any of 
the straw, and to buy six tons of oil-cake to feed 
out with it, but those of us who are short of 
capital must be content to bring up our land by 
slow degrees. Last fall, if I could have met 
with a nice thrifty lot of grade short-horn steers, 
coining three years old, and had had the money, 
there can be little doubt that it would have paid 
to have given six or seven cents a pound for 
them, and bought oil-cake to feed them in con- 
nection with my coarse fodder and clover hay. 
They would have brought ten cents a pound 
this spring. They would have paid handsomely 
for the oil-cake and hay, and something for the 
straw, besides furnishing a grand lot of rich ma- 
nure. But even if I had had the money, the grade 
short-horns are not to be mat with in this section, 
and so I did the best thing I could. If my oil- 
cake and clover hay manure does not tell next 
year on the wheat crop, I will revise my cal- 
culations as to its value. In the meantime, I 
have no sort of doubt that, after deducting the ex- 
pense of drawing it out, oil-cake and half clover 
hay and half straw will make manure that is 
worth at least six times as much money as 
manure made from straw alone. 
Geddes and I do not differ as much as you 
suppose. In fact I do not believe we differ at 
all. He has for many years been an earnest 
advocate for growing clover as a renovating 
crop. He thinks it by far the cheapest manure 
that can be obtained in this section. I agree 
with him most fully in all these particulars. 
He formed his opinion from experience and ob- 
servation. I derived mine from the Rotham- 
stead experiments. And the more I see of 
practical farming, the more am I satisfied of 
their truth. Clover is unquestionably tlie great 
renovating crop of American agriculture. A 
crop of clover equal to two tons of hay, when 
plowed under will furnish more ammonia to 
the soil than twenty tons of straw-made ma- 
nure, drawn out fresh and wet in the spring, or 
than twelve tons of our ordinary barn-yard 
manure. No wonder Mr. Geddos and other in- 
telligent farmers recommend plowing under 
clover as manure. I differ from them in no re- 
spect except this : that it is not absolutely 
essential to plow clover under in the green state 
in order to get its fertilizing effect; but, if made 
into hay, and this hay is fed to animals, and all 
the manure carefully saved, and returned to the 
land, there need be comparatively little loss. 
The animals will seldom take out more than 
five per cent of all the nitrogen furnished in 
the food— and less still of mineral matter. I 
advocate growing all the clover you possibly 
cau — so does Mr. Geddes. He says, plow it under 
for manure. So say I — unless you can make 
more from feeding out the clover hay, than will 
pay you for waiting a year, and for cutting and 
curing the clover and drawing back the manure. 
If you plow it under, you are sure of it. There 
is no loss. In feeding it out, you may lose more 
or less from leaching, and injurious fermentation. 
But, of course, you need not lose anything, ex- 
cept the little that is retained in the flesh, or 
wool, or milk of the animals. As things are, 
on many farms (including, it may be, my own) 
it is perhaps best to plow under the clover for 
manure at once. As things ought to be, it is a 
most wasteful practice. If you know how to 
feed out the hay to advantage, and take pains to 
save the manure (and to add to its value by 
feeding oil-cake with it) it is far better to mow 
your clover, once for hay, and once for seed, 
than to plow it under. Buy oil-cake with the 
money got from the seed, and growing clover 
seed will not injure the land. 
Some good wheat growers in this county 
mow their clover the first year for hay and for 
seed, and the next year pasture it till the middle 
of August or the 1st of September, and then 
plow it up and sow wheat, without any previous 
cultivation, and little, if any, harrowing. They 
say they get better Mediterranean wheat in this 
way than if the land was plowed in June or 
Jul}', and "summer-fallowed." The straw is 
stouter and the grain yields better. If your 
land is clear and in good heart, I do not see 
why this is not an excellent plan. Wheat re- 
quires a firm foothold, and I have often thought 
that we not unfreqnently get the surface soil, on 
light land, too loose aud mellow. The time to 
clean and mellow the land for wheat is when it 
is in corn, two or three years previous. The 
Norfolk or Four Course System of Rotation, 
almost universal on the lighter soils of England 
is: 1st, Turnips; 2nd, Barley, seeded with 
clovers; 3rd, clover, hay or pasture; 4th, wheat. 
The labor is nearly all spent in preparing the 
land for the turnip crop. It is frequently plow- 
ed four times, and cultivated, harrowed and 
rolled repeatedly. Barle}' is sown as early as 
the land can be plowed, and got into good work- 
ing order. The clovers are sown and harrow- 
ed in with a light harrow, aud the roller i3 
passed over the field when the barley is an inch 
or so high. Wheat is sown on the clover sod 
immediately after it is plowed. "When sown 
broadcast, the land is not even harrowed, but the 
seed is sown on the furrows as left by the plow. 
If our land was rich enough, and we treated 
corn as a " fallow crop," cultivating it until the 
soil was as mellow as an ash heap, we might 
adopt the same system. Sow the corn stubble 
with barley, and seed down heavily with clover. 
Pasture it but little, if any, in the fall, after the 
barley is harvested. Pasture it the next sum- 
mer with sheep till the 1st of September. Plow 
and sow wheat at once. Seed down the wheat 
again with clover. Mow it for hay and for seed 
t ho next year. Then manure heavily and plant 
corn. The success of such a rotation will de- 
pend on the thoroughness with which the corn 
13 cultivated. Generally our barley stubbles are 
overrun with weeds, and for this reason we do 
not more frequently seed down with barley. 
The best thing to do with a seeded down 
barley stubble infested with weeds, is to run the 
mowing machine over it, and shave off the 
stubble, weeds, etc., close to the ground. I 
adopted this plan last fall on my wheat stubble, 
on some sandy knolls, that were full of thistles. 
It has checked them sufficiently to enable the 
clover to get the start of them this spring, and I 
think it will smother them out. The mowing 
machine is not appreciated as a means of 
destroying weeds as fully as it should be. 
Imaginary Diseases, and Grub in the Head. 
Could we have a report of all the diseases of 
which our domestic animals die, made out by 
their owners, the list would be a very instruc- 
tive oue. A few days since we were soberly 
assured by a farmer that be had lost two horses 
from feeding them corn stalks in the winter. 
We imagine it would be very hard to kill a 
horse with as many corn stalks as he could eat. 
Among the '• archives" at the Agriculturist 
office we have many sure cures for horn-ail, and 
we have hardly a doubt but hundreds, if not 
thousands, of our readers might be induced to 
testify that their cattle had died of this disease. 
The temperature of the horns indicates in a 
measure the health of the animal. If the horns 
are hot, it is feverish ; if cold, there is a lack of 
circulation — but of all parts of the body they are 
probably least liable to be affected by disease. 
Wc even doubt if they are ever primarily affect- 
ed. Very much the same is true of sheep dying 
of grub in the head. There is no doubt about 
the distress caused by these parasites. The gad- 
fly causes great distress when it deposits its eggs 
on the nose of the sheep after midsummer. 
The larva which soon hatches annoys the ani- 
mal intensely when it ascends the nostril, aud 
in spring the mature larvte make the poor ani- 
mals nearly wild and crazy wdien they leave 
their homes in the cavities of the head, and 
descending through the nostrils, come away — 
to burrow in the earth, and in about two 
months to reappear as perfect gad-flies. A cor- 
respondent, using the signature "Hermon," hav- 
ing 15 years' experience, has sent us some sen- 
sible notions on this subject, which we give: 
"The nearly universal theory of grub-gener- 
ation is undoubtedly correct. And it is also 
true that nearly every sheep has grubs in the 
spring ; as may be proved by dissecting the 
heads of slaughtered sheep. Yet, who ever 
knew of a flock of sheep being attacked by the 
disease called grub in the bead while they were 
being fattened for the butcher ? Towards spring, 
when they have lost much flesh, from scanty 
food or lack of shelter, and sometimes both, 
the sheep will die. Then the farmer takes bis 
ax, and splits the skull, where, sure enough, he 
finds the grub. This removes all doubt about 
the disease, and excuses him from all neglect, 
for ' the grub is incurable.' Now, if this same 
man should have sheep killed by dogs, and the. 
heads should be found to contain grubs also, 
would he say the disease, or the clogs, were at 
fault ? Sheep in reasonable condition in the fall, 
and kept thriving through the winter, are rarely, 
if ever, said to die of the grub. The more severely 
a sheep is afflicted by them, the more liable it is 
to become even worse the next winter. Hence 
