1874] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
335 
careful farmer, who houses his implements and 
machines, petroleum is not necessarv. He 
would be likely to think it a nuisance, as the 
implements will for some time afterwards 
soil his hands and his clothes. But to a care- 
less farmer, like myself, who leaves his imple- 
ments and machines more or less exposed to 
the weather, petroleum will be of great benefit. 
"Better learn to put things up," says the 
Deacon. I admit that. But even the Deacon 
sometimes leaves a wagon cracking in the sun, 
or a hay-rack rotting in the rain, and his stone- 
boat is not always turned up on its side. 
"We are now, (July 23,) thrashing our wheat 
— drawing it in from the field as we thrash. I 
am the only man in this neighborhood who a- 
dopts this practice. Come and see how it 
works. After the wheat is cut, and the sheaves 
put into stooks, we rake the ground carefully 
between the rows of stooks, going over the 
ground twice in opposite directions. Before 
commencing to thrash, we load up all the Tak- 
ings. When these are thrashed, all is plain 
sailing. We have three wagons and two teams ; 
as soon as a wagon is unloaded, itr is pushed 
out of the way by hand, and the next load is 
driven up. The man who has just unloaded 
the previous wagon, takes off the team and 
puts it on to the empty wagon, and goes to the 
field for another load. He reaches the pitcher 
just as he has finished the third load, and the 
work is fairly commenced. There is one wagon 
at the machine, another going back or forth, and 
another being loaded in the field. Where this 
kind of work is new to the men, it will be like- 
ly to dissipate some of their old traditions. 
They will find that a machine does not thrash 
as fast as they have hitherto supposed. Two 
of my best men jumped on to the wagon to 
throw the sheaves to the machine. I had a man 
to spare for half an hour, so I said nothing. It 
is one of the old notions that it takes two, 
three, or four men to " get the grain to the 
machine " from the stack or bay. " One man 
can't give it us as fast as we want it," said the 
thrashers. "Perhaps not," I replied, "but at 
any rate one man can throw the sheaves off the 
wagon, as fast as the man in the field can 
pitch them on to the wagon." — " We want 
three good men on the straw stack." — This is 
another traditional notion. " One man is 
pitching on to a wagon all the grain and 
straw that is going through that machine." — 
" But wait. They have just finished a load, 
and the thrashers see we are talking about 
them, and are doing their best. Let us see 
how long it takes to thrash the next load. — 
How long ? Fourteen minutes, and there was 
15 bushels in the load. That will do. Now 
then, about stacking the straw. With a fair 
crop of wheat like this, that will go say 30 
bushels per acre, there is about 100 lbs. of straw 
to each bushel of grain. That load we have 
just thrashed, therefore, weighed 2,400 lbs. The 
machine takes out 900 lbs. of grain, and 1,500 
lbs. of straw is elevated by the straw-carrier on 
to the stack. Now, if one man can pitch 2,400 
lbs. on to a wagon, at an average hight of 9 
feet, why are tbree stout men required, to 
handle 1,500 lbs. in the same time on the level ? " 
" You get on to the stack and try it," says the 
Deacon, " and you will find out." — I have been 
there a great many times. The labor consists, 
not in moving the straw, but in moving your- 
self about the stack. And the way to lessen 
the labor is to make large forkfuls. An aver- 
age forkful of straw, say as large as a two- 
bushel basket, does not weigh more than 8 lbs. 
As men usually build a stack, they walk around 
the outside more than in the center, while the 
center ought to be kept full and trodden 
solid, so that, as the stack settles, the inside or 
roof shall not settle as much as the outside. To 
do this, as well as to lessen the labor, you 
should, in building the outside layers of the 
stack, take pains to get the largest forkfuls of 
straw, and not waste your strength in placing 
a thin layer of straw around the outside of the 
stack. It is like carrying water in a two-quart 
pail. You move 150 lbs. of your own weight 
to move 4 lbs. of water. 
Every year before commencing to thrash, 
the question arises " how long and how wide 
shall we make the stack bottom ? " — This year 
we made it 36 feet long, and 20 feet wide. 
The machine stands about 3 feet higher than 
the bottom of the stack. After we had thrash- 
ed 403 bushels of wheat, the stack was 24 feet 
high, with an average width of 25 feet, and an 
average length of 38 feet. The stack therefore 
containes 22,800 cubic feet. And if we calcu- 
late that each bushel of wheat gives us 100 lbs. 
of straw, there is 20 tons of straw in the 
stack. This is uot far from my old rule of 
calculating, that each ton of straw requires 
about 1,000 cubic feet of space. " But you 
won't leave your stack without topping it off," 
remarks the Deacon. No, I have got about 8 
tons more straw to put on top. And it has 
got to go up there whether it will or not. By 
Monday morning the stack will have settled at 
least four feet, and I propose to carry the walls 
up four feet higher than they are now. Then 
by making a good steep roof, it will hold it all, 
and we shall have 28 tons of straw in a stack, 
the bottom of which is 36 feet long, and 20 feet 
wide. It is of course more labor to top off a 
high stack, but there is a great advantage in get- 
ting as much straw as possible under one roof. 
Thick and Thin Seeding. 
The fact that plants yield more largely when 
they are furnished with abundant room, and 
that the thin seeding of a crop, up to certain 
limits, yields a better harvest than any thicker 
seeding, is no new thing. We read of it in the 
works of the most ancient writers upon agri- 
culture, and early historians record facts il- 
lustrative of the advantages of sowing thinly, 
and of the extraordinary yields of grain from 
single seeds. Nevertheless the subject is as 
fresh as ever, and we see every year good 
farmers wasting large amounts of seed, and 
sacrificing large portions of their crops. We 
have recently seen a piece of oats sown with 
one bushel per acre, which yielded a better 
crop than a neigboring field sown with four 
bushels per acre. A few years ago we divided 
a ten-acre field into five portions, and sowed 
them with wheat at the rate of one bushel, five 
pecks, six pecks, seven pecks, and two bushels 
of seed per acre. There was no perceptible 
difference in the soil of the field, nor any in the 
manuring, preparation, or sowing. At harvest 
time there was a very perceptible difference in 
the yield, the thinnest sowed portion being by 
far the best of the field, and the thickest por- 
tion the worst. Near the edge of the field, 
upon the thinnest sown part, where the seed 
had been thinned out by some pigeons, there 
were some stools of wheat with 30 stalks, each 
bearing an ear ; and in this part of the field the 
difference was mostly shown in this way, and 
in the length of the ears. The other side of 
the field, where two bushels had been sown, 
produced much shorter ears than this portion. 
At a meeting of the Midland Farmer's Club, 
held at Birmington, England, in June last. 
Major Hallet read a paper upon thin sowing 
and selection of seeds. It was illustrative of 
his experiments in raising what he calls 
"pedigree wheat." He exhibited a single 
plant of wheat from a single seed planted 
alone, which bore 94 stems, one of barley of 
the same character bearing 110 stems, and one 
of oats with 87 stems. He stated that a crop 
of wheat he had sown with single seed 9 inches 
apart each way produced 108 bushels f er acre. 
He suggested the experiment be tried of 
drilling 8 quarts of wheat per acre early in 
September, and one quart additional for each 
week to the end of the month. Also that seed 
be selected from the produce of these plots for 
future sowing, with reference to its hardiness, 
its triteness to type, its quality of the grain, its 
productiveness, its power of tillering or casting 
up numerous stems, its stiffness of straw, and 
its earlincss of ripening. His plan of selecting 
seed was to take the most perfect grains from 
the largest ear of the plant with most stalks, 
and plant them so that the grain from each er.r 
occupied a row by itself, each grain occupied a 
hole in the row, and the holes 12 inches apart. 
This plan was repeated yearly, taking each 
year the best grain produced. By this course 
in several years he had succeeded in doubling 
the length of the ears, in trebling their con- 
tents, and in increasing the tillering power 
five-fold. Five pints of wheat planted 12 inches 
apart each way, upon an acre of ground in Sep- 
tember, gave 1,001,880 ears, or 67,760 ears in 
excess of the crop from pecks per acre sown 
upon the adjoining field. Later plantings re- 
duced the crop somewhat. Two plants with 
24 ears each gave 1,911 and 1,878 grains. 20 
ears per foot, with 48 grains to an ear, will 
produce 88 bushels per acre. A bushel of 
wheat produced by this thin sowing contained 
460,000 grains, while a bushel of ordinary wheat 
contains 700,000 grains. Here is interesting 
matter for consideration, and if, as seems scarce- 
ly to be doubted, thin seeding is more produc- 
tive than thick, it might be very profitable to 
experiment in this direction. It is necessary 
to remember that for such seeding, to be suc- 
cessful, the soil must be rich and free from 
weeds, and that the crop also must be kept free 
from weeds by thorough cultivation. Although 
with better farming than we now have we can 
raise large crops, yet it is certain that the pos- 
sibilities of better farming are not nearly 
realized as yet. 
Road-Dust. — Road-dust should be gathered 
before the season closes. This is often the 
most convenient absorbent the farmer can com- 
mand, and a few barrels of it will save a large 
amount of ammonia in the hennery, the privy, 
and the stable. Hens should have a large open 
box full of it under cover, where they may 
dust themselves at their pleasure. It is an ex- 
cellent thing to have in the stable, and when 
saturated with urine makes a valuable fertilizer. 
The fineness of the dust, continually ground 
by the iron tires and horse-shoes, is one cause 
of its favorable action upon crops. That gather- 
ed from a clay soil is best — indeed sand, 
whether from the road or elsewhere, is of br* 
little use as a deodorizer or absorbent. 
