174 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
For the American Agriculturist. 
A Finality on Rats. 
No pests are more annoying to the farmer 
and housekeeper. The destruction of property 
by them in the aggregate, is enormous. Many 
a farmer loses more by rats than the whole 
amount of his taxes. They burrow under the 
pig-trough, and come as regularly for their 
feed, as the pigs themselves. They share the 
food of the poultry and the horses and cows, if 
they are grain fed. They show themselves in 
the barn and house cellar, and devour the roots 
stored for Winter use. Thus there is a contin- 
ual waste, and the amount in the course of the 
year is very large. But this is not the worst 
part of it. The scoundrels are so cunning that 
they outwit us, and evade every effort to oust 
them. Set traps for them, and you rarely catch 
more than one in a place. Stop up their holes, 
and they dig new ones. Set poison for them, 
and after a single night's experience the survi- 
vors will not touch it. A few are killed but all 
their neighbors come to the funeral and occupy 
their places. Put your cat in the barn, and they 
only withdraw to the house cellar. Put her in 
the cellar, and they flee to the barn. Occupy 
both with cats, and they flee to the corn crib. 
Wherever there is a chance for depredation, 
there the rats do congregate and multiply with 
astonishing rapidity. 
What can be done? There is no effectual 
remedy but to make your buildings rat proof. 
The corn crib is easily insulated from rats and 
mice, by setting it on four posts capped with 
inverted tin pans, or large flat stones. The posts 
should be three feet high and the steps to the 
door should be movable, and should be taken 
away whenever the door is shut. But other 
buildings with cellars must be cemented on the 
bottom, and have the walls pointed with mortar 
in order to exclude them. This work fortunate- 
ly is easily and cheaply done, and no man need 
go without a cemented cellar bottom for lack of 
skilled labor to do the job. He can do it himself. 
The articles wanted for the mortar, are sand and 
common water lime, which sells ordinarily in 
the New- York market from $lj to $li a barrel. 
Builders and masons in our large towns and vil- 
lages, generally keep it on hand. The sand 
should be as pure a silex as you can find, and 
if the grit is coarse, so much the better. 
To make the mortar, take two parts sand to 
one of cement, and mix thoroughly in the dry 
state, then apply just water enough to have it 
work well, and lay upon the cellar bottom with 
a trowel an inch thick or more. Only so much 
should be mixed, as you can use immediately. 
If you do not wish to employ the mason, you 
can make your work rat proof without him. 
First prepare your cellar bottom by making it 
level, and ramming it so that it shall be as hard 
as a foot path, then apply the mortar and 
smooth it with a trowel. The thickness of the 
cellar bottom will depend upon the use you de- 
sign to make of it. If you wish to drive a cart 
over it, as is necessary sometimes in large barn 
cellars, it should be at least four inches in thick- 
ness. In this case it is well to mix with the 
cement, gravel of the size of hens' eggs or small- 
er. If it is a cellar bottom, simply to hold ma- 
nure, or to store roots in, an inch in thickness 
is just as good as more. In this case you should 
dig a trench say four inches deep by three broad, 
immediately adjoining the cellar wall on all sides 
and fill it with the mortar. The point of danger 
is immediately by the wall where the rats seek 
to enter. This also may be mixed with sifted 
gravel stones. When their teeth bring up 
against the gravel, it rather blunts the edge of 
their voracity. The expense of cementing the 
cellar of a common sized house, say thirty by 
forty feet, will not be over ten or fifteen dollars, 
not counting the labor. Many a farmer loses 
more than this in a single season. The cement- 
ing is a work done for life and we have found 
it to be very effectual. , Connecticut. 
[" Connecticut's " suggestions" are good, irre- 
spective of cemented bottom cellars being proof 
against rats. Unless, however, the walls and 
the earth outside are made solid with the ce- 
ment, the rats will do more or less mischief out- 
side the walls. — In the April Agriculturist, page 
119, we referred to using a "phosphorus 
salve," bought in Fulton-st., (we forget the name 
and number,) and are glad to report that the 
rats and mice are still absent. Not a dead one 
has been seen, or " smelled," and w r e conclude 
they went elsewhere. The remedy proves so 
effectual, even in our buildings which contain 
so many inviting seeds, that we shall advise Mr. 
Lane, of the Purchasing Agencj', to hunt up the 
material, and advertise it in this number. — Ed.] 
Talks About Weeds. 
Perhaps few persons have taken into account 
the immense labor, expense, and care involved 
in the destruction of weeds. A large proportion 
of all the work required in the cultivation of the 
hoed crops, arises from the necessity of keep- 
ing these pests in proper subjection. If weeds 
did not grow, we could dispense with half of 
all the labor now expended in growing our 
thousand million bushels of Indian corn ; and 
so of the turnip, the onion, the' tobacco, the 
cabbage, etc., and of nearly all garden products. 
This subject is so important, that we deem it 
worth while to devote a few chapters in the 
American Agriculturist to the discussion of the 
habits of the principal weeds, with hints upon 
the best modes of exterminating them. And 
first, a few general considerations. 
We have many letters inquiring how this or 
that particular weed may be killed ; the mis- 
taken idea being that there are specific poisons 
for the destruction of the different noxious plauts. 
A weed is any plant which grows where it 
is not wanted, no matter whether it is in itself 
beautiful, or useful, or not. Bye, a useful plant 
when grown by itself, is, when mixed with wheat 
a troublesome weed ; and many of our choicest 
garden plants are weeds in other countries, 
while some of our common weeds are cultivated 
elsewhere for their beauty. Weeds are subject 
to the same laws of growth, and flourish or lan- 
guish under the same conditions as other plants ; 
any destructive agent or poison that would kill 
them, would destroy the useful plants also. In 
cultivation, to serve our own purposes, we 
place certain plants in an unnatural condi- 
tion — a condition which alone makes them 
valuable to us. We all know how perfectly 
worthless the common carrot, parsnip and tur- 
nip become if allowed to run wild, and doubt- 
less without the care of man, a majority of our 
cultivated plants would become equally value- 
less. A given space of soil can sustain only a 
limited number of plants; those of a naturally 
strong growth, or which find the locality favor- 
able to them, live and flourish, while the weaker 
ones or those unsuited to the locality, are killed 
out by the greater vigor of the others. This is the 
natural state of things. Cultivation gives a plant 
the best possible chance to develop itself, and 
to do this wo not only supply an abundance of 
the kind of food best suited to its growth, but 
also remove all other plauts which would in- 
terfere with it, and thus give it full possession of 
the soil, and relieve it from the necessity of 
struggling with competitors. In preparing and 
enriching the soil for the desired plants, we at 
the same time adapt it equally well for those 
not desirable. If a field is planted and left 
to itself, all have an equal chance, and the prob- 
ability is, that the undesirable plants, or. weeds, 
will either obstruct the growth of the cultivated 
plant or kill it out altogether. In cultivation 
we must not only give our plants the best 
chances as to food, but must also see that 
they have full possession of the soil prepar- 
ed for them. The practical part resolves itself 
into two questions : how do weeds get into the 
soil ; and, being in, how are they to be exter- 
minated. We must recollect that nature makes 
abundant provision both for the reproduction 
and the preservation of every plant, no matter 
how insignificant, or troublesome even, it may 
be, and we can not work for the growth or the 
destruction of any plant unless we understand 
its peculiarities and treat it accordingly. Take 
any field which we wish to cultivate, and plow 
it up ; if left unfilled, it will be found that there 
were already seeds enough in the soil to com- 
pletely cover it with vegetation. If we manure 
the field, a host of seeds will be introduced in 
the manure. Not only this : numbers of plants 
of the thistle family have their seeds furnished 
with down, and every breeze will bring hundreds 
of them from the neglected field of some care- 
less neighbor ; cattle and sheep may bring 
them in their hair and wool ; even the work- 
men will bring them attached to their cloth- 
ing, and birds will deposit them in their ex- 
crements. If the field is where it is overflowed 
by freshets or where it receives the wash of oth- 
er lands, multitudes of seeds will be brought in 
by water. It will be seen that there is abund- 
ant provision for seeding the soil to weeds. 
As already hinted, the vegetation which first 
gets possession of the soil, tends to keep other 
plants out, hence it will be seen that the early 
destruction of weeds tends to give the crop the 
advantage ; this of itself, is a great point gained. 
Weeds have three general modes of growth : 
1st. The annual weeds, or those which start from 
the seed and perfect themselves the first }'ear, 
like purslane and shepherd's sprouts: 2nd. The 
biennial weeds, which pass the first y*ar in mak- 
ing strong roots that bloom the second 3'ear 
and die, as the wild parsnip and carrot : 3d. 
The perennials that may or may not flower 
the first year, but which keep on growing and 
make a strong mass of underground roots and 
stems that soon get possession of the soil to the 
exclusion of all other vegetation, as the Cana- 
da thistle, and the docks. The free use of the 
hand hoe and the cultivator will destroy the an- 
nuals, and also the others while they are in the 
early stage of their growth. It is only when the 
last two sorts get possession of the soil that there 
is any serious trouble. When they are old 
enough to have made large roots or tubers they 
then have a store of material from which they 
can throw up numerous shoots ; and this thej- 
do so frequently and so rapidly as to give the 
impression that it is impossible to kill them. 
Any of these plants will die, if not allowed to 
produce leaves. Frequent mowing or, if not too 
numerous, cutting just below the surface of the 
ground will ultimately exterminate them. The 
underground supply of food which these plants 
have stored up, must give out, if it be not rep.en- 
ished hy the growth of leaves. If the cultivator 
