1866.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
247 
l>ai-kcn<^-<I Counsel. — "A" tbinks that 
he does not profit mncli by leaJing agrirultiiiiil articles 
as '■ Siateinf=nts are made by Itie learned writers one 
wci-k to be dally contradicted the next." We judge 
from his qunlalions Ihat lie reads the reports of !he 
Fainiers" Cl'li). uliicli is great on flat contradietion. It 
cannot be expeele.l that ra'-n from the satidy portions of 
Loni? Island ami New Jersey should agree with those 
from Westchester Co.. ilpoti manuring strawberries, or 
anything else. Whether it b<? true that Isabella Grapes 
"will tnakp a pig sqneal,'' we cannot say. Those we 
had last year, front Crooked Lake and Doct. Undcrhiil, 
were too good to waste in suidi expei iments. 
Poisoiie<1 I'loiii — Caution to 9I>U 
lers. — .A whole C'Mnmnnily in Oiange Ct»., N. Y., have 
been poisoned, some fatally and mo^t of them seriously, 
by means of lead which was introduced into their flour 
through the almost ciiniinal carelessness of a miller. 
The lead was used to fill cavities in ati old millstone, 
and in the process of grinding was of course rubbed to 
powder and mixed with the flour. In this way, some 
SOO persons have been subjected to more or less severe 
leai-I-pohoiiing. If other millers are in the habit of re- 
pairing their stones with lead, let them take w.nrning. 
The lead in this case was so finely divided as to he in- 
visible, and its presence was only suspected frotn Ihe 
cases presenting the symptoms of lead-poisoning. 
Tranfiplniiting' Carrots.— " L. H. C." 
asks, if it will pay to transplant Carrots. Probably not, 
as a general thing ; though in the small way in the gar- 
den, it may be well to fill wide gaps in this way. To 
succeed, it must be done when the plants are very small. 
■^Vliicli is Best? — Ml-. Hayes writes: "I 
have no tante giass yet. Whi<di is best for corn fod- 
der : t.) plant in hills, take off the ears and cut the stalks 
in the usual way, or to plant thickly in drills and cut 
italks and all.?"— The latter usually, for most fodder. 
Sliillein lieaves to Drive Atvay 
Rats,— .\t ihe suggesiion of a fiiend, the writer, with 
little faith in the tneasnre, once tried laying .Mullein 
leaves around the rat holes in his cellar, to drive the rats 
away. In a short time, the leaves were mainly gone. 
More were laiil down, but were not taken awtiy. The 
rats were gone. These are the facts in that case. Why 
the rats went, is not known, unless the leaves gave them 
pain or alarm. — Other hke experiments will be easy, 
where Mullein grows. 
Walks and Talks ou the Farm, 
No. 31. 
A few days ago ^ received the following letter 
from onr friend, John Johnston: 
New Geneva, N. T., M.ay ITth, 1866. 
Dear Sir. — "Dr.aining on the brain" will never 
hurt farmers. Thc-y will gain grandly during the 
disease, and get fot after they get over it, that is, 
if it lias continued long enough.— I believe if 
I had you here for an hour I would give you 
another brain complaint that would ultimately 
help to fatten you. True, I could write out the 
prescription, in a way, but I can tell you there 
is nothing like seeing to make people believe. I 
would meet you any morning at the depot for the 
early train, bring you over to bic-ikfast on ham and 
eggs, give a dinner of the same ; take you over 
for the 4 P. M. train, and if not satisfied with what 
you have seen, you can charge me your faro back." 
I went, and, of course, bad to pay both ways ! 
I think it was Walter Scott who said he was never 
thrown into the. company of any man, however il- 
literate, without learning something useful. And 
certainly he must be a dull scholar who can visit 
a farmer of over forty years' experience, without 
picking up infornmtion that can be tunied to good 
account. I Lave visited John Johnston a great 
many times, and wish every young farmer in the 
country could enjoy the same privilege. He is so 
delightfully enthusiastic, believes so thoroughly in 
good farming, and has been so eminently success- 
ful, that a day spent in his company connot fail to 
encourage any farmer to renewed efforts in im- 
proving his soil. "You ntiiM drain," he wrote to 
me when I commenced farming, " I never m.ade 
any money till I began to underdrain." But it is 
not underdraining alone that is the cause of his 
eminent success. When he bought his farm, "near 
Gcnev.a," over forty years .ago, there was a pile of 
manure in the yard that had lain there year after 
year till it was, as he said, "as black as my hat." 
The former owner regarded it as a nuisance, and a 
few months before young Johnston bought the 
farm, had given some darkies a cow on condition 
that they would draw out this manure. They drew 
out six loads, toolc the cow — and that was the last 
seen of them. Johnston drew out this manure, 
raised a good crop of whe.at, and tb.at gave him a 
start. He says, he has been asked a great many 
times to what ho owes his success as a farmer, and 
he has replied tliat he could not tell, whether it was 
"dung or credit." It was probably neither. It 
was the man — his intelligence, industry, and good 
common sense. Tliat heap of black mould wag 
merely an instrument in his bauds that he could 
turn to good account. 
His first crop of wheat gave him "credit," and 
this .also he used to advantage. He believed that 
good farming would pay, and it was this faith in a 
generous soil that made him willing to spend the 
money obtained from the first crop of wheat in en- 
rieliing the land, .and to a%-ail himself of his credit. 
Had he lacked this faith— had he hoarded eveiy six- 
pence he could have ground out of the soil, who 
would have ever heard of John Johnston ? He has 
been liberal with his crops and hisanim.als, and has 
ever found them grateful. This is the real lesson 
which his life teaches. 
On my return home, I got from the post office a 
book entitled "Higli Farming without M.anure." 
I thought, when I first saw it, that it was probably 
an account of the Rev. Mr. Smith's experiment in 
rtiising wheat year after year on the same land 
without mannre, in which he succeeded in raising 
heavy crops simply by good tillage. There are 
many examples of the same principle in this 
country with corn, on rich bottom land. Good, 
clean culture has given, far many years in succes- 
sion, large crops of corn. It is well understood — 
or rather it ought to be well understood — that good 
tillage, or stirring the soil, decomposes the organic 
matter in these rich hands, and enables them to 
produce large crops without manure. But in re- 
ality the manure is in the soil, and, working the 
ground simply makes it available. The principle 
is true of all naturally good soils, upland and allu- 
vial. It is a great truth, and those farmers are wise 
who recognize it, and Iceep the cultivators running. 
But sh.ill we depend on tillage alone? A man 
may he so placed that for a year or two he has 
nothing else to depend upon. He may have taken 
a "run down" farm, and cannot get manure. lu 
this case ho will cultivate a portion of his land in 
the best manner possible. He will kill the weeds, 
and make the soil clean and mellow, and if the soil 
is naturally good, and the season favorable, he will 
get a lair crop. But will he adopt this as a s\'stcm ? 
Not he. I will guarantee that any farmer who has 
energy and intelligence enough to work his land 
thoroughl)-, who will cultivate his corn, for in- 
stance, every week or ten days as long as he can 
get a horse through it; siaeh a man, I say, will not 
stop here. He will make all the manure he can. 
And so on the other hand, if you find a man who 
takes special pains to make and apply manure, you 
will find that ho .also cultivates his Laud thoroughly. 
I have never known an exception. 
As a general rule, there can be no such thing as 
"high farming without manure." Were such a 
thing profitably possible, our barn yards and prem- 
ises would soon be reeking with decomposing 
matter, and noxious gases would pollute the air. 
We should lose one of the grand incentives to 
cleanliness, and nothing but the fear of some ma- 
lignant disease would cause us to keep our prem- 
ises sweet .and clean. But now the very things 
which are most injurious to iicalth, arc the very 
things of most value in increasing the crops. De- 
pend upon it, no discovery will be made whereby 
we can profitably dispense with manure. 
" But you did not tell us what Mr. Johnston 
wanted to show you." I am coming to it. Mr. J. 
mt\kes a great deal of manure, and what is better, 
he makes good manure. He fats a flock of sheep 
every winter, giving them corn and oil cake, and in 
the spring, after lie has sold his sheep, he throws the 
manure nj) into loose piles, and turns them onco 
or twice till they are thoroughly rotted. ThisTna- 
nure he spreads early in the fall on his grass land 
that he intends breaking up for corn in the spring. 
This is his usual practice. But a year ago last fall, 
when sowing his wheat, he put on a plight dressing 
of manure on two portions of the field that he 
thought were rather poor. The whole field wa3 
seeded down with Timothy in the fail at the time 
of sowing the wiieat. No clover was sown. This 
spring those portions of tlic field dressed with ma- 
nure are covered ml7t a ajtlemVul crop of clover. ToU 
can see the exact line in both cases wlicro the m.a- 
nure reached. It looks very curious. No clover 
seed was sown, .and yet there is as fine a crop of 
clover as one could desire. 
On looking into the matter more closely, wo 
fouiul that there was more or less clover all over the 
field, but where the manure was not used it could 
hardly be seen. The phtnts were small, and the 
Timothy hid them from view. But where the ma- 
nure was used, these plants of clover had been stim- 
ulated in their growth till they covered the ground. 
The leaves were broad and vigorous, while in the 
other ease they were small .and almost dried up. 
This is doubtless the right explanation. The ma- 
nure did not " bring in the clover"; it simply in- 
creased the growtli of that already in the soil. It 
shows the value of manure for grass. 
This is what Mr. Johnston wanted to show me. 
" I might have written and told yon, but you would 
not have got a clear idea of the matter." This is 
true. One must sec the great luxuriance of that 
piece of clover to fully appreciate the effect of the 
manure. Mr. J. said the manure on that grass was 
worth thirty dollars .an acre — that is on the three 
crops of grass before the field is again jilowed. I 
have no doubt tliat this is true, and that the future 
crops on the land will also be benefited — not di- 
rectly from the manure perhaps, but from the clover 
roots in the soil. And if the field were pastured, 
the effect on future crojis would bo very decided. 
I spend an hour or so on Mr. Sheldon's beautiful 
farm — looking at his splendid licrd of Shorthorns. 
As I drove up I passed the finest field of young 
grass and clover I ever saw. I asked a man who 
was at work near it what Mr. Sheldon had put on 
the field that made the grass so big. "Nothing, 
as I knows of," he said, " it's capit.al land." Is this 
high i\vrming without m.anure ? Not a bit of it. The 
field, — .about twenty acres, — was manured heavily 
in the fall on the sod, and jdowed up and planted to 
corn, receiving good culture. It was then sown 
with oats, followed by whe.at, and seeded down 
with a peck of Timothy in the fall, and six quarts 
of clover in the spring. The wheat received a good 
dressing of manure. And those acquainted with 
Mr. Sheldon's mode of feeding, will know that the 
manure is not simply rotted str.aw. It is as licli as 
can be made from stall-fed cattle. This is the secret 
of the magnificent crop of gr.ass. It will doubtless 
cut, three tons to the acre, at least— and this fed 
out will give more manure, and so the land is kept 
continually improving. Good grass and clover 
arc the bases of good farming. 
What a pest red root Is ! You h.ave hoard me 
make that remark before ! Weil, if you suffered as 
much from it as I do, jon would excuse me. You 
recollect where I had beans last year. No land could 
be cleaner. It was in wheat the year before when 
I took the farm, and was so full of couch-grass 
that I concluded not to seed it down, but to try my 
hand at killing the quack. After the w heat w as off, 
I plowed the land and harrow-ed it, and just be'ore 
winter set in I plowed it again. In the spring I 
run the cultivator through it, and harrowed; then 
plowed again, and harrowed, and cultivated again, 
and then harrowed and raked up the quack into 
heaps, and burnt it. I then planted it to beans, 
and kept them thoroughly cultivated and hoed. 
Last fall 1 sowed it to wheat. I do not think there 
is a root of q-uack left, but the red root came up by 
the million ! 
Now what I ought to have done is this : Instead 
