174 
AMERICAN AaRICULTURIST. 
Mat, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm. 
No. 29. 
Last Sunday mornins, (March 18), just as I 
was getting ready to go to church, Sprightly 
asked me to come and look at the sheep. Five 
of tliem were down, and trembling all over. 
They were ewes, with lambs two or three weeks 
old. "We had them in the bay in the barn, and 
fed tliera with pea straw and a little over half 
a pint of corn, each, a day, giving them water 
regularly at noon. They did uncommonly well, 
the lambs were strong and healthy, and the 
ewes were in fine condition. Saturday was a 
very cold day, and during the night the west 
wind pierced through any ordinary protection. 
Still the lambs stood it admirably, but the ewes 
were all of them drooping, and five were down 
and unable to get up. I immediately got some 
■warm gruel, and ginger, essence of peppermint, 
and whiskey. By tlie time tlii-s was ready, two 
of them were dead. I drenched tlie other three, 
but one of them died in an hour or so, and the 
other two during the afternoon. In tlie mean- 
time two more were taken. I gave tliem warm 
gruel, Willi a wine gl.ass of whiskey each. One 
of them recovered, and in an hour or two was 
as well as ever. The other I kept alive for 
thirty-six hours, with heavy doses of brandy, 
but she died some time during the second night. 
Apost iiwrtcm examination showed no organic 
disease that I could discover. The only unusual 
symptom was that the large stomach was full 
of water. The man who has charge of them is 
faithful and reliable, and he says he watered 
them regularly every day. Otherwise I should 
account for their loss in this wise: The sheep 
were fed grain and dry food, and, as they were 
giving milk, would require considerable water. 
Now, should it happen that they were allowed 
to go without watering for a day or two, and 
were then given a liberal supjily, it is probable 
that some of them would drink more than was 
good for them. The water was cold, and the 
sheep, being already chilled by the cold night, 
their uei'vous system would receive a shock 
from which it could not recover. This is 
just what happens when persons die in summer 
from drinking a large draught of cold water. 
I do not say that my sheep had not been 
watered, but if such were the case, and they 
were then given all they would drink on Sunday 
morning, the probabilities are that the}' would 
be prostrated by it, and show all the symptoms 
manifested on this occasion. Many people 
think sheep do not require water, and this 
absurd notion has a bad effect. Farm men, not 
to say fanners, who are especially opposed to 
what they call " theories," are more than all 
others influenced by any erroneous notion they 
may adopt. Tlie Doctor would say that this is 
the result of " Adam's Fall." Error is more 
natural to our minds than truth, just as thorns 
and thistles grow more freely than wheat and 
potatoes — and more especially on vacant, uncul- 
tivated ground. With the mind, as with the 
field, a smothering crop is the easiest way of 
getti.ig :i,l of such weeds and notions. Sow the 
seeds of truth thickly, and keep sowing, and if 
errors aie not eradicated they will be greatly 
weakened. — " I hear you have lost some sheep." 
said one of my neighbors, " what was the mat- 
ter with them?" "They drank too much cold 
water." "Very likely," he replied, "too much 
water is bad for sheep." There you see this ab- 
surd notion cropping out again. I did not ex- 
plain, but of course the cause was not giving 
them too much water, but giving them too little. 
Had they had water freely at all times as they 
needed, they would not have drank too much. 
The Squire and neighbor B. heard that an 
alarming epidemic had broken out among my 
sheep, and came over in the afternoon. Before 
I saw them they had time to investigate the 
matter, and hr.d agreed on their verdict. " Have 
you been feeding these sheep buckwheat ?" they 
asked. " Yes," I replied, " I have fed it to them 
occasionally, (here they exchanged significant 
glances), but it is oner a year ago." " Have you 
given them any this winter, sir?" asked the 
Squire in the tone ofa lawyer cross-questioning 
a witness. " Not a grain ; I only feed it when 
it is cheaper than corn, and this winter it sells 
for more than corn." " Do you suppose," I 
asked, "that the buckwheat I fed a year ago 
could have produced the death of these five 
sheep, for if so I shall probably lose the whole 
flock, for they all had it ?" After a few mo- 
ment's Iiesitation the buckwheat theory was 
given up and "grubs in the head" adopted. 
"Perhaps so," I replied, " but it is curious that 
the grubs should ' eat through,' as the saying is, 
all at the same moment, and still more curi- 
ous that the whiskey should liave cured one of 
the sheep that was affected." 
Just as they went away I heard them say: 
"Been feeding too much corn." I let it go at 
that. I have been feeding liberally, but cannot 
for a moment believe that this is a cause of the 
sudden death of the sheep. If it was apoplexy, 
it is not likely that six or seven should be at- 
tacked all at once, with none before or after. 
I am raising the lambs for the butcher, and feed 
the ewes liberally all winter, knowing that this 
would produce rich milk and fat lambs. And 
it is a fact that, as the Agriculturist said some 
time since, " a little grain fed to the ewes will 
make the lambs grow like weeds." But blessed 
is that farmer who attends to his own stock, or 
who at least lias a fixed habit of seeing daily 
that their wants are regularly supplied. 
I tliink I am improving in this respect. Tlie 
absolute necessity of constant supervision is a 
truth soon brought home to any one who at- 
tempts to gain a living by farming. I believe in 
liberal feeding — both plants and animals. But 
this is by no means all that is necessary to insure 
success. If you manure land, it should be 
evenly spread, and if you feed grain, it should 
be fed regularly. Animals, to thrive well, must 
be kept quiet and comfortable. They must be 
easy in their minds. A harsh word should never 
be spoken to them. They should be petted. 
But who ever found a farm man that would do 
it? I have liad men who would shout at cattle 
so loud that you could hear them half a mile, and 
they evidently thought it manly to speak to 
even a gentle cow as though they would take 
her head off. The reason why so few amateur 
farmers, so called, succeed, is the want of atten- 
tion to details. General plans, general direc- 
tions, however excellent, will not answer. It is 
the little foxes that spoil the grapes. 
Frost is a great pulverizer. It beats Cross- 
kill's clod crusher. If our clay soils are under- 
drained and fall-plowed, so that the frost can 
act upon them, they will become as friable as 
marl, and produce far heavier crops than those 
of a more sandy character. Our diy, hot sum- 
mers are also favorable to working stiff soils. 
You shake your head. But it is so. lamawaie 
that wet clay lands will bake, in our climate, as 
hard as bricks. But that is not the fault of the 
climate. It is the best climate in the world for 
an enterprising, intelligent farmer who keeps 
ahead of his work. When I came to this 
country first, nothing astonished me more than 
to see the ease with whicli even clay land could 
be made mellow and friable. I wish all our 
grumblers could have a year's experience on an 
English clay farm, in a mild winter and a wet 
summer. Tliey would be better able to appre- 
ciate their privileges, and perhaps would be in- 
duced to avail themselves of the opportunity 
afforded by onr splendid, liot summers, for 
cleaning, working and mellowing the soil. I 
have no patience with a man who lets his corn 
or potatoes grow to weeds. Keep the cultivator 
going, and it will not only kill the weeds, but 
make the soil as mellow as a garden. I cultivated 
some of my corn, last year, over ten times, and 
will do it again this year. It pays — pays on the 
corn and pays, even more, on the future crop. 
It is a great mistake to think that weeds can- 
not be killed. They can, and if farmers really 
believed it, and would go to work vigorously, 
commencing early in the season, and sticking 
to it as long as a weed showed its head, we 
should soon see cleaner land, productive farms. 
How much easier it is to dig ditches in the 
spring tlian in autumn ! The ground is wet and 
soft, .and a man will dig fully one-third more 
ditch now than in the autumn, when the 
ground is dry and liard. You can, too, com- 
mence to dig much earlier in the spring tlian is 
generally imagined. My main open ditch, that 
I cut a year ago, was not deep enough — the 
water set back and stopped, or at least impeded 
the discharge of water from the under-drains 
running into it. I was determined to deepen it. 
There was a considerable amount of water run- 
ning into it, especially from the surface. I 
thought the best time to do it would be on 
frosty daj-s, when the surface water was frozen. 
"We had just the right kind of weather the latter 
part of March. The water in the ditch pre- 
vented the bottom from freezing, but the loose 
soil that had fallen in from the sides was just 
hard enough to enable us to throw it out in 
cakes. I told the 'Squire I was going at it. 
"You can't get any men," he said, " that will 
go into a ditch at this season of the year." But 
he was mistaken. I went at it myself, and got 
four men to help me, and in three mornings the 
job was done. Nothing like trying. I did not 
ask the men to work at it all day. It is contin- 
uous cold that tells on the system. You can 
stand it very well for half a day, and if you 
work with a will you can do nearly as much in 
half a day as in a whole one. I felt proud of 
the ditcli when it was finished. "We got it a 
full foot lower than the tiles. 
In cleaning out and deepening such ditches, 
most people use a long handled shovel. Give 
me a good Ames' spade. A shovel is an Irish- 
man's tool, and should not be tolerated in a 
ditch, except to clean out the bottom. "You 
can tell a workman by his chips," and you can 
tell a good ditcher by the clean, square, un. 
broken spadefuls he throws up. In cutting un- 
der-drains, a skillful ditcher will take out the 
soil clean to the depth of the spade, and will 
leave veiy little loose earth, and what he does 
leave will be trodden down in taking out the 
next lawr. There is no necessity for shovel- 
ling out tiU you come to the bottom, and then a 
long handled scoop will clean the drain, ready 
for the tiles, better than an}' other implement. 
I am inclined to think that, except on springy 
land, we need fewer under-drains than are found 
necessary in England. "S\'"e have more rain at 
all seasons of the year than they have in Eng- 
land, hvA fewer rainy days. It this country, " it 
