1675. 
AMERICAN AGRICULT UHIST. 
63 
course one of the best, but in this latitude rye has 
been my most profitable green manure, and I thinli 
is csjiecially adapted to gardeners' needs. Some 
years ago just at planting time, I found myself 
short of suitable land for still another variety of 
seed melons, which I was obliged to grow, and 
leased ten acres of land upon which was growing a 
crop of rye. 1 turned under the rye with a chain 
on the plow, about the middle of May, and planted 
Nutmeg Melon. The occasional straws sticking 
up, gave the field a ragged appearance for a time, 
but when the mid-summer drouth was upon us, 
and other fields succnmbed, this one looked as 
fresh and vigorous as could be, and in fruiting even 
excelled the promise its appearance gave. The 
yield of seed was more than one-half larger than 
on similar land in good heart, but not green 
manured. I have practiced green manuring ever 
since, and always with satisfaction. Its benefit 
seems to be due not only to the available fertility 
it fiu'nishes, but also to its mechanical effect on 
the soil, and thus maintaining moisture through 
our worst drouths. I sow rye thickly — about 6 
pecks to the acre — and early if possible, so that 
the plants shall stool out before winter, endure the 
exposure better, and make a quicker and larger 
growth in the spring. If any coarse manure can 
tie spared, we spread it broadcast during the win- 
ter. It protects the i-ye from winter killing, and 
like all winter and spring top-dressing, induces in- 
creased growth, and both directly and indirectly 
helps the subsequent crop. 
Eye seems especially adapted to tlie farm garden- 
er's use, since a large portion of bis crops are out 
of the way in time to sow it, and moreover a num- 
ber of tender vegetables can not be planted until 
well into May, by which time the growth is as 
large as can readily be turned under. In this way 
it utilizes the land during that portion of the year, 
when it would otherwise be idle, and in which no 
other crop can be grown. Upon the farm too it 
comes in nicely, if the succeeding crop is to be 
corn, roots, or late potatoes, and more particular- 
ly sowed corn for fodder, for which it seems 
to be especially adapted. Even after corn I suc- 
ceed well with it, sowing it broadcast and culti- 
vating it in leaving the corn hills standing, as they 
gather snow and help to protect the rye in winter. 
I have sown peas — common field varieties. Mar- 
rowfats, or any damaged seed of tall varieties — 
after early potatoes, even as late as middle of 
August, and when at their largest, some time in 
October, turned them under, and used the ground 
for early spring planting, and found it excellent. 
It is superior to rye only in this respect, that the 
ground is available for the earliest plantings. 
Buckwheat makes an excellent manure, when 
the ground is ready for it in season, being of quick 
growth, great bidk, and permeating the soil with 
roots, while the tops cover the surface and choke 
out all weeds ; but it must be grown and turned 
down between frost and frost, at just the time 
when every foot of the gardener's soil is oceuijied, 
so that I have found but limited use for it, except 
on very poor soils which were unavaUablo until 
more heart could be given them. 
Sowed coi-u is subject to quite the same com- 
mendation and criticism. Each is excellent iu 
fitting land for turnips, grown in place of a sum- 
mer fallow. Upon land too poor to sustain a crop, 
being a light gravelly soil with little vegetable 
matter, I have sowed com thickly in May, and 
turned it under early iu August, and then sowed 
Marrowfat peas, which were turned under early iu 
November. These gave sufficient substance to the 
soil to mature excellent crops of lettuce and 
flower seeds the next season, receiving in addition 
a slight top-dressing of fine manure. I think green 
manuring especially valuable on light soils. 
Of course I would myself, and would recommend 
to others to get every f orlc full of manure to be bad, 
and applyit. And yet upon the same land I would 
in addition apply green manure whenever practica- 
ble. The labor of applying evenly 40 loads of 
manure per acre, is considerable. All this is done 
more evenly by the green crop. Seed and labor 
together, cost me but S3..50 per acre. I can not say 
that it adds as much fertility to the soU as 40 loads 
of manure, but I do say that iu our drouthy sea- 
sons, it produces as great an increase of crop as do 
40 two-horse loads of good manure. How much 
of this is due to its ability to resist drouth, and 
how mueli to increased fertility, I can not say. It 
certainly pays to practice it, and to practice it 
largely, even on the land well suxjplied with stable 
manure, as that increases the vigor and growth of 
the green crop, which is immediately with additions 
returned to the soil. , 
All these crops are so heavy that they must be 
" chained down," i. e., a heavy chain is hung from 
the end of the whiflJetree cross-bar to the plow 
beam, with slack enough so that it drags just ahead 
of tlie uprising furrow, and tluis pulls down every 
stalk into the empty furrow as nicely as it could 
be laid by hand. With this as much can be neatly 
covered as the empty furrow will hold. 
f ME IHI(D)lUg]EE(D)LB. 
{For other Housefiold Items, see ''Basket " pcycs). 
Home Topics. 
ET FAITH llOCnESTER. 
** Spx iu Education," 
Those who have daughters to educate, ought to 
read this book. It is not a new one, having been 
before the public at least a year, but it has just 
fallen to my lot to give it a careful reading — the 
more careful because the notices of it whicli I had 
seen in the papers, were mostly calculated to pre- 
judice me against it. But the book seems to me a 
very useful one, and I should suppose that its 
author has at heart the true happiness of woman, 
as well as the welfare of the race in general. He 
would not limit the intellectual advantages of 
v,'omcn, but he would so arrange these, that girls 
would feel encouraged to exercise and cultivate 
their minds In such ways as do not coufliet with 
their natural and healthy development as women. 
There are so many other things that hinder the 
healthy growth of girls, and destroy the womanly 
powers of women, that it seemed at iirst a little 
cruel wheu Dr. Clarke, of Harvard University, 
pitched upon this particular one — a wrong method 
of education — and epoke so strongly. But he sees 
clearly the other causes of woman's ill health, and 
speaks t-ordially of the new dress reform move- 
meut, and of the need of dietetic and social 
reforms. He takes one thing at a time — sex in 
education — and writes as though he has no " fear of 
falling into his own ink-pot," as Emerson says. It 
is no part of his work iu this volume, to discourse 
of the evils that war against womanhood in Inter 
life, so a few criticisms whieli some of us elderly 
over-worked women have made, were uncalled for. 
The law made plain by Brown-Sequard, in his 
lectures on the nerves — that the human body can not 
do two things well at the same time — is the basis of 
Dr. Clarke's argument. He thinks that one reason 
why women sutfer very greatly from all manner of 
distressing female ailments, i^ because girls are put 
to school and required to do too ranch brain work, 
and to do it too regularly and ijersistently during 
those years, between thirteen and twenty-five, 
when nature is seeking to devcloi-) and perfect in 
them, that wonderful reproductive apparatus, so 
essential for their own happy destiny as women 
and as mothers of the human family. 
It is to be hoped that those who read the book, 
will have sense enough to apply the laws of health 
and growth there explained, to a!l departments of 
education, phy.sical, mora), mental, siicial, industri- 
al, etc. Though a very useful book in its way, and 
at this time, it is Ijy no means " the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth." I did not find in it 
that "coarseness," and "insulting tone toward 
women," which some women have professed to 
discover— less coarseness indeed than in some of 
those reviews. The author docs not write as one 
who thinks of women as "weighted by her sex," 
in the race of life, nor does he seem to consider 
woman entirely from the physical stand-point. He 
speaks of essential and distinctive womanhood, as a 
source of great and peculiar power, in intellectual 
and spiritual life, when t7, (or sex itself), is not 
" weighted " by excessive burdens of labor or care. 
In speaking of the delicacy and dangers that ac- 
company womanhood, he also speaks of its corres- 
pondinrj privileges, which none can understand bet- 
ter than those mothers, however poor and sick, 
who sometimes feel the most tender pity for fathers, 
because they can never possibly know the wonder- 
ful sweetness of Uttle babes, as such mothers know 
it. He deseiwes the hearty thanks of cultivated 
women, for his testimony from bis own medical 
experience, that maternity is not generally unieel- 
come to educated women. 
A Rnstic PorcSi, 
Speaking of Rustic Porches, {ride, Agriculturist 
for Dec. 1874, page 462). I wish I had a sketch of 
the very simple but very pleasant porch over the 
doorway of a log-house, where some of the earlier 
numbers of these papers were written. I meant to 
make a drawing of the pretty cottage — pretty 
because symmetrical in shape, and ornamented by 
so tasteful a porch — but when I sat out upon the 
lawn admiring it and its forest background, I 
always had a babe in my lap, or close beside me. 
That is not the only log-cabin where the Agricultnr- 
isi is taken, and for the help of log-cabin readers, 
also for the edification of those who wonder wheth- 
er thei"e truly can be such a thing as " love iu a cot- 
tage," and dare not experiment for themselves, let 
me try to describe that little porch. Judging from 
memory, I think it was only five feet by three, the 
outer posts being set three feet from the house 
wall, and five feet apart. This gave room for two 
short low benches, each side the doorway, set facing 
each other. The posts were uupeeled tree-stems, 
four or five inches in diameter. There were four 
of these in front— the two corner posts and two 
between these, each a foot from the comer posts, 
or three feet apart. The whole — the sides and 
front — except the opening in front three feet wide 
for a passage, was enclosed with a coarse lattice 
work of unpeeled hickoi-y twigs, from an inch to 
two inches in diameter. These twigs were nailed 
diagonally from post to post, about eight inches 
apart, interlacing each other, making diamond- 
shaped openings or lattice work. Two posts set 
against the house wall, five feet apart and opposite 
the front corner posts, with poles across from one 
to another, the front posts being a little shorter 
than the ones next the house, gave the support for 
a slightly sloping shed or lean-to roof of boards. 
There are few cottagers so jjoor that they can 
not have such a porch, for it is very quickly made, 
as well as cheap in materials. The house was 
pleasanter, even in mid-winter, for the presence of 
the porch, and in summer, when the wild cucum- 
ber vines and morningglories clambered over it and 
upon the roof, it was truly " a thing of beauty." 
Patterns for tbe Ne^v Uudcr*&:ai'ineats. 
The Dress Committee of the N. E. Women's 
Club, advertise that they have taken rooms at 35 
Winter street, Boston, Room 15, over Chandler's 
dry goods store, where they may be visited in busi- 
ness hours, or addressed by those wishing patterns 
or information. Tlie price for a pattern of the 
chemUoon or the gabrielle imderskirt, (or any single 
garment, I believe) is twenty-five cents. They also 
have cotton and woolen chcmiloons for sale. 
A reader of the Agriculturist has sent me patterns 
and a cambric model, of a combination garment of 
her own invention, which she calls the " Emancipa- 
tion Suit." It is similar to the chcmiloon, with 
the addition of a gored underskirt attached at the 
waist. The waist of the garment is cut quite long, 
and somewhat basque-shaped, goring out over the 
hips. The fronts are cut away over the bosom, and 
a full strip inserted— like an unlmed yoke waist 
with a very wide belt— a belt shaped by the darts 
of the basque. These patterns are kept for sale by 
Susan Taylor Converse, of Woburn, Mass., I do not 
know tiieir price. 
I see that Mrs. J. G. Swissbelm, of Chicago, also 
comes forward as an inventor of a garment, which 
seems to be a combination of shirt and drawers, 
