2 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Jaitoaet, 
Contents for January, 1866. 
Agricultural Education H 
Agricultural Department at Wasliington 6 
Azaleas-Native 2 Illustrations .. a 
Back Volumes Supplied • • • ^ 
Bag-Holder— Convenient Illustrated.. n 
Barometers- Useful * 
Barn-Door Fastening Illustrated. .12 
Bees— Apiaiy in January 4 
Bees— Bidwell Brothers' Experience 15 
Boole List for Farmers and Otliers 5 
Boxes instead of Pots 21 
Boys and Girls' Columns— Clieclters or Draughts- 
Puzzles— $50 in Prizes for the Ingenious— Holiday 
Picture— Pear Tree and Grape Vine— Little Boy 
Moves a Great Ship— Impromptu Invention— Origin 
of Cast Iron Manufactures- WittyTemperance Men 
—Sudden Cure—" How do You Like It ?"— Merry 
Christmas and Happy Nevr Year. 6 Illustrations. .26-28 
Bull Ring— Best Form Illustrated.. 13 
Business Items • ^ 
Card from Mr. Harris— Genesee Farmer 6 
Canary Bird Flower Illustrated. .21 
Chapped Hands— Prevenlive 26 
Chrysanthemums— Select in Flower 23 
Corn Bread, and Pudding 26 
Cattle's Horns— Wooden Knobs for. . .4 Illustrations.. 13 
Drag-Saw Machinery Illustrated. . 16 
Farm Work in January 2 
Flower Garden and Lawn in January 4 
Flowers for a Grave 25 
Fruit Garden in January .-.■ 3 
Garden— Kitchen in Januaiy 3 
Grain— Feeding to Stock Pi ofitably 14 
Green and Hot-Houses in January 4 
Hogs— Slaughtering Illustrated— li 
Horse Stable— Best H 
Horticultural Work in January 3 
Housekeepers— Request to 25 
Look Ahead for the New Year 15 
Manure— Reform Needed 14 
Market Reports 6 
Minced Beef 26 
Movements of Plants 4 Illustrations.. i2 
Orchard and Nursery in January 3 
Ornamentation of Tables and Dishes 25 
Poultry House— Novel Illustrated. .\7 
Poultry— Value of Spanish Fowls 17 
Premiums for 1866 4 
Protecting Implements, etc 11 
Pumpkin Pancakes 26 
Refui m— Needed and Practicable 14 
Rice Pudding- Delicate 26 
Silvering Powders, Tooth Powder«, etc 25 
Sleigli— How to Make Strong Illustrated. .16 
Southern Farming— Good Chances 10 
Sponge Cucumber 2 Illustrations..i5 
Stables— Light Needed for Animals 13 
Tomatoes— Experience with 21 
Top-dressing Meadows ; 11 
Turkeys' Holidays Illustrated.. 20 
Turkeys— How to Raise 13 
Vines, Roses, etc., in Pots, vs. Broad Boarders 28 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— Continued from the 
Genesee Farmer 18 
Watering Pot— French Illustrated.. 21 
Weighing Scales- Uses for Illustrated. .K 
Western Agriculture 12 
Winter Greens— Club Mosses Illustrated— 23 
INDEX TO " BASKET," OR SHORTER ARTICLES. 
Advertisements, About.. . TiGiinpowder, Harmless.... 9 
Agricultural Colleges 10, Hay Fork Attachment . . » 
Agricultural Papers 9 Hay, Measuring 9 
Agricultural Report 7 1 Horses, Catching 10 
Agriculturist Strawberry. 8 Horses. Shoe Calks 10 
Barrel, Contents of. 9lllumbug Pen 7 
Beet Sugar 8 Jewelry Swindle 9 
Books, Best 7 Lightning Rod Swindle... 9 
Br.inch Log Chain lo LUios, Piornsniins 8 
Bug Exhibition 7 Lottery Humbugs 9 
Bushels of Ears 7|Milk Stools 8 
California Swindle... ... 9 Manure from Weeds 9 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
NEW-YORK, JTAI^'lJAieir, 1866. 
,.10 
..10 
7-10 
Cattle Lice 
Callle Plague, Law.. 
Cobs, Value of. 
Cheese Makers' Ass'n 
Dahlia, Propagating 
Death, C. Haiis 
Farmers' Clubs 
Farmer's Scrap Book ... 
Feeding Box 
Forty Pages 
Fruit List 
Gardening Books 
Gooseberry Literature... 
Grain Bin Ventilators . . 
Grape Culture, Fuller's. 
Grapes, Large 
Grapes, Yeddo 
Greasing Boots, etc 7 
Greeley Prizes 
Mulberry, Everbearing... 8 
Pelargoniums, etc 8 
Planls Named 8 
Pleasant Reading 7 
Pomological Meeting 8 
Potatoes and Chestnuts.. 8 
Raspheny Queries 8 
Rats Eating Harness 9 
Ricinus, Large 8 
Rural Annual 7 
Sassafras Sprouts 8 
School of Mines 7 
Southern Cultivator 7 
Stripping Cows 10 
Subsoil Plow 10 
Tomatoes, Soil for 8 
Topping Produce 8 
Walks and Talks 7 
Warty Teats 9 
As we divide time, we are now on the tbreshold 
of a New Tear, one of those times when men in- 
tinctively look forward to what time has in store for 
them and for the world, and, as man can only judge 
the future by the past, we look back also. To us, 
of this nation, the future, bright with hope, open- 
ing the most abundant rewards for peaceful indus- 
try, contrasts so happily with the year just past, in 
its beginning, that we hardly dare believe that 
Peace has come, and th.at our great Nation is to 
start anew in its career of progress in the arts of 
peace. Agriculture is an art of many arts ;— what 
science docs it not employ, and what art does 
not work to its advantage? If we are wide- 
awake to learn'and to apply as well as to invent and 
to discover, we shall be no laggards in this race of 
progress. Terrible have been our sacrifices,— grand 
has been the hopeful fortitude of the nation, and 
with virtue and faithfulness to our high trusts, 
great will be the reward. 
FarmerB will give more and better thought now 
to their farms, and with this will come greater pros- 
perity. Winter may stop hand-work, but it cannot 
stop !icad-wo)% and they both yield equally valu- 
able results. Planning for the future, laying out im- 
provements, and looking ahead in sundry ways 
should not only occupy the mind those January 
d.ays aud evenings, but such plans and good ideas 
should go, straightway, down upon paper. This 
avoids dreaming over the same things day after day, 
and makes thinking of much more avail. — It is like 
harrowing in the seed. This reminds us of an excel- 
lent style of a ready reference, scrajj- and memo- 
randum-book which we will describe in "(/le Basket." 
Hints about ^Vork. 
The frugal legislators of some of the States 
(Connecticut in particular) are oald to havo placed 
the time of holding the annual sessions of the legis- 
lature in May, because as most of the members were 
farmers, there would be a guaranty against long 
sessions, in the pressing necessity for them to re- 
turn to their farms to put in their crops ; but when 
the effort was made to change the time to the 
winter months, the law makers, no longer so frugal 
of the people's money, argued that winter work 
upon the farm needed more the vigilant eye of the 
master than that of any other season. So indeed 
it does ; spring is the seed-time, but winter is the 
golden fruition,— more than any other, the ripen- 
ing time of the farmer's year's toil, when beef, 
mutton and pork, corn and wheat, are most readily 
converted into greenbacks. To promote this end 
Animals of all kinds need constant care. We 
subject them to unnatural influences of food and 
confinement, and should see to it that the na- 
tural laws of health are not violated, that they are 
all clean, have pure air, light, exercise, good feed 
aud water. The curry comb and card cannot be 
recommended for use on sheep and poultry, but 
all the other live stock of the farm will be benefit- 
ted by their frequent employment. Try c.irding the 
calves and colts regularly, and mark their improved 
appearance ; and the animals which more than any 
others fairly speak their gratitude for a currying arc 
Swt7ie, whose thrift and good growth will also bo 
greatly promoted by extraordinary cleanliness. Ar- 
range this mouth for the forrowing of sows about 
the first of May. During her sixteen weeks of ges- 
tation a BOW should have a clean .and comfortable 
sty, be supplied with abundant litter and with 
succulent and rather bulky feed, in preference to 
grain, or nutriment in a concentrated form. An 
excellent diet is potatoes, and other roots, apples, 
pumpkins, etc., with oats, bran, or corn me.al, in 
small quantity, all boiled together. 
Slteep.—K so situated that you can watch the 
market and t.ake advantage of its fluctuations, 
crowd the fattening sheep as fast as possible, so as 
to have them fat and ready for market in case snows 
or other causes cut off the supply by rail. If the ob- 
jeet be to consume fodder and'make manure, feed 
more deliberately — giving more freedom and exer- 
cise. Lambs need the best quality of hay,6ome roots, 
a little grain,and access to straw, or they may fall off 
in condition. When sheep have no roots or simil.ar 
food, keep them supplied with hemlock or pine 
boughs, and if convenient, give them the range of 
a piece of woodland, where timber has been felled. 
Toung Stock.— One great means of having fine 
stock is bestowing attention and good care on them 
while growing. All kinds, especially colts and 
calves, should be kept rapidly growing, and never 
lack pure water. Probably three quarters of the 
young stock of the country nearly or quite stop in 
their growth during several weeks, each winter. 
Calves and Yearlings should always be separated 
from large cattle, and receive more nutritious feed 
than store animals or dry cows require. Half a 
pound of oil-cake meal per head (soaked or scald- 
ed in mueh water, and sprinkled over the fodder,) 
will promote health and thrift. 
Colts will thrive well on one quart of oats each, 
daily, with a good supply of bright straw or two 
pounds of hay. The same quantity fed as cut- 
feed, the oats being ground, will be mncU better 
for them. 
Morses.— Cuny or card all whether worked or not, 
if you would keep them in good health, and give 
all not worked daily an hour or two for exercise, 
turning them loose, one .at a time, lest in their pkay 
they kick each other. Do not expose brood mares 
to danger of falling in slippery weather ; bring wat- 
er to them, or keep them calked, aud so too. 
Oxen used on slippery roads should be kept well 
shod, both for their comfort and their owner's secur- 
ity. Large bodied oxen often get a bad habit of 
crowding by being worked in short yokes aud go- 
ing in narrow sled tracks. The remedy for this 
difficulty is to make the sleds to run wider and the 
yokes longer. Long yokes alone will not cure it. 
mich Cows should not be milked too close upon 
their time of calving. If dried off within five 
weeks, it is well enough for ootu cow aua calf. 
Cows not giving milk do not need so good feed, 
but should be stabled if possible, and fed good 
hay and stalks, which if chaffed and wet up with a 
little bran, corn meal or oil cake will go much 
farther. The fact is, farmers generally pay too little 
attention to properly economizing 
Fodder of all kinds. It ought never to be fed 
upon the ground— the waste will pay for good racks 
in one season. Fodder goes farther and is consum- 
ed to better advantage when hay, straw, cornst.alks, 
with a suitable allowance of roots or grain are fed 
daily, at different feedings or mixed more or less, 
than when the animals are confined for days or 
weeks to one kind of coarse fodder. One of the 
most economical ways to feed 
Oats is to thresh off about two-thirds of the grain 
and feed the straw with the remainder to sheep and 
cattle. It will be found neariy equal to good hay. 
Grain.— It is poor economy to feed any kind of 
grain whole or uncooked, to any stock except sheep. 
They do their own corn-grinding to advantage, ex- 
cept when being rapidly fattened. If whole corn 
be fed, pour boiling water over it and let it stand 
twelve hours ; and if boiled h.alf au hour after that, 
it is all the better. A strange but gcner.al pre- 
judice exists among many old-school fixrmcrs not 
only against feeding grain, but against feeding 
Boots : their extended culture and free use will 
pay, not only in introducing a better system of 
farming, but in the better health and condition of 
the stock, and in maintaining them aud fattening 
them at less cost. Look to it that roots do not 
freeze. If in pits or heaps, where the earth has 
caved in or been washed away, p.atch such spots 
with strawy manure, or earth. Sliced or mashed 
they may be fed to all kinds of stock, from chick- 
ens to horses, in large or small quantities to advan- 
tage, if only with regularity. Another very gene- 
rally neglected but excellent article of feed is 
Oil cake or Oil meal— This, as our readers know, 
is the residue after pressing out the oil from lin- 
seed and is properly called linseed oil-cake, (or 
