324r 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[September, 
Yield of Corn in Iowa.- J. E. Darby, 
of Madison Co., Iowa, expresses his surprise at the state- 
ment made by Walks and Talks, that the premium crop 
of corn in Ohio last year was only 51 bushels per acre, 
and that after heavy manuring. We may remark here 
that this statement was pronounced incorrect by a prom- 
inent member of the Ohio Board of Agriculture, but afler 
investigation he admitted that W. and T. was right. Mr. 
I D. says: "I have lived in New York and Ohio, and have 
' farmed some ten years in this State. That amount would 
1 certainly be nothing more than an average yield here 
with very ordinary cultivation. I have noted the average 
of nearly every crop I have raised in this State, and with 
the exception of two years, one a very wet, and the other 
a very dry season, when the yield was about thirty bush- 
els, my average has been nearer sixty bushels per acre 
than fifty, and this without manure, though manure 
docs as much good here as elsewhere. Perhaps if your 
readers saw this statement they might he induced 
to leave the ' stones of Western New York, 1 and the 
stumps and swamps of Western Ohio, and try the windy 
prairies of Iowa." — We are always glad to present such 
facts. Nevertheless, we are satisfied that farmers need 
not be discouraged from attempting to get out the stones 
or remove the stumps, or drain the tr.v.v.nps, or undertake 
any other improvement of their present farms, because 
there is richer and better land in some other section. We 
would dissuade no one from going to the rich land of 
Iowa. We merely want to urge those who are there to 
improve their farms and not leave them because they hear 
of better land elsewhere. Our agriculture lacks stability. 
The May Crop in Connecticut. — 
Mr. II. S. Collins writes us that the yield of hay this sea- 
son is less than for the last two years. " That cold win- 
ter killed the clover and other filling, leaving the grass 
thin. I must plow up and re-sccd. We are not on nat- 
ural grass land here, but my grass usually averages from 
2 to 2V 2 tons per acre. This year I fear it will be not 
over 1 14 tons. I cannot put up with that. Fields cut- 
ting 3 tons per acre dropped to V/ z tons at once. lam 
sowing more tall grasses. Fine grasses do little on my 
land except on two drained pieces. But of rye grasses, 
orchard grass, timothy, and tall meadow oat grass, I can 
get large crops and steam them to advantage."— We think 
this a valuable idea. When all the fodder is cut up and 
steamed for the cows, with more or less meal, it is prob- 
ably more important to secure a large crop of grass of 
even a rather inferior quality, than to get a small crop of 
a better quality. Where cows arc kept on hay alone, with- 
out steaming, quality is more important than quantity. 
Sti^ut and Left-hand Plows.— We 
continue to receive a great many letters on this subject. 
Most of tho writers are in favor of the left-hand plows. 
We have no sort of objection to them. We presume they 
arc just as good aud just as convenient as the right-hand 
plows, but after reading all that our correspondents have 
said on the subject, we are not prepared to advise our 
readers to throw away all their right-hand plows. If we 
lived in a section where left-hand plows (that is to say, 
plows having the mouldboard on the left side of the plow) 
were used, we should use them, but as the writer has al 
ways been accustomed to right-hand plows, and can man- 
age to turn a very fair furrow with them without any 
special difficulty, he sees no urgent reason for changing. 
A Pig Lot at the £»outn — A Northern 
man who has purchased a plantation in Mississippi 
writes us : "How to map out a pig lot is one of my 
present anxieties. What will do North will not quite do 
for this climate." — We cannot help him. Better adopt 
the method of the country and improve it, rather than to 
strike out a new plan at first. 
Floors Tor Cow Stahles. — A gentle- 
man in Connecticut, who keeps a large dairy and soils 
his cows, writes us : " I am exercised about a cow stable 
floor. Cement will freeze some cold suap and then scale. 
Is there no mixture of coal tar, ashes, etc.. that will an- 
swer better and not be so strong smelling as to suffocate 
my animals ? No ordinary coal tar concrete used on our 
walks would answer, but I am sure some mixture could 
he made that would do well. Chestnut planks rot in two 
or three years, and are expensive."— One of our editors 
paved his cow stable two years ago with stones, but as 
they were not evenly laid he drew into the stable a quan- 
tity of rather clayey soil and pounded it firm all over the 
floor wh^re the cows stand, giving a gentle slope towards 
the back of the cows for the liquid to drainoff. As !>■• 
l^vcs ill the grain growing district he has plenty of straw 
for litter, and in his case this floor answers a good pur- 
pose. Stiff clay, put in wet and thoroughly pounded, 
will, when dry, make a floor almost as hard as a brick, 
and if it wears in holes where the cows. stand, H can 
easily be natched up with more clay aud pounded in. lie 
does «ot k-iow of any cheaper or better material for floors. 
THE 
CHEAPEST 
IIV THE AVOHLI>!!! 
Please Look at this, and Tell 
all your Neighbors about it ! 
Having increased the size of this Journal to 
44 large pages, with the beautiful cover upon 
each number, the last poiut of cheapness would 
seem to be reached. But for the sake of secur- 
ing at once the proposed 250,000 subscribers 
for 1870, we now put in an extra premium to 
every new subscriber received duriug Sep- 
tember, as follows : 
3 Months Subscription for $00.00. 
Every New Subscriber to the Ameri- 
can Agriculturist for 1870 (Vol. 29,) 
whose subscription coines to us be/ore 
Sept. 30£/i, will be presented with the pa- 
per the rest of this year without charge. 
$1. 50 Received during September will 
pay for this paper, for one new subscriber, 
for all of 1870, and for the last three 
months of this year, also ! — (15 months!) 
$5. 00 Will pay for Four new subscrib- 
ers, (only $1." each) for 15 months ! 
$12."° Will do the same for Ten new 
subscribers, ($1. 2 " each) for 15 months ! 
$1, 00 Will do the same thing for each 
new subscriber, where twenty or more 
club together. — (15 months for $1.) 
3tW The above offer will positively expire 
•n Sept. 30, except in the few cases where sub- 
scribers are too distant to respond by that date. 
The names had better come right in at once, 
so as to be properly arranged before the next 
paper is ready for mailing. 
l>i*OBitli Better than, too kiucIi 
Rain.— A Kansas correspondent of the Country Gen- 
tleman writes : " Still it rains— it will average a rain 
every hour. My hay all rotted, barley has sprouted, and 
wheat is sprouting. Oats cannot be harvested. This all 
happens in dry, parched, sun-scorched Kansas, and it has 
been so nine out of twelve years. Give me a drouth ; I 
can do better farming in a drouth than in a flood. "—This 
is the true doctrine. It is what we have always asserted. 
We can do much to guard against drouth, but compara- 
tively little against too much rain and too little sun. 
Undcrtlraining will help, but we can do nothing without 
solar heat. The sun is the great motive power in farm- 
ing; and yet from the complaints we usually hear, one) 
would think that drouth was the greatest of agricultural 
calamities, while in truth a good farmer rarely suffers 
much ultimate loss from a dry summer. Some crops may 
suffer, but others will do well, and at any rate it gives 
him a good opportunity to destroy weeds, and get hia 
land into good order for the next year's crops. Stock, 
especially sheep, "do better on roast meat than on boiled." 
The fanner wilt never be independent of the season, but 
he can do ranch to guard against the injurious influence 
of unpropitious weather. Fortunately the means best 
adapted to secure good crops in a wet season are pre- 
cisely the means necessary to avoid the ill effects of a 
drouth. Uuderdraining is the first step, and thorough 
tillage and the destruction of weeds the next. No matter 
what the season may be, a well-drained and properly 
worked farm will always produce the best crops. But 
the good farmer will always do better in a dry season than 
in a wet one, aud hence it is that we contend that our 
climate is admirably adapted for agricultural pursuits. 
The lot of the American farmer is fallen iu sunny places. 
Never let us complain of drouth and heat. 
Bcccher's Sermons, — The sermons of 
the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher are published by J. B. 
Ford & Co., each week, in a neat form, convenient for 
reading and for preserving. Wc do not feel that we arc 
advocating any particular sect when we commend Mr. 
Beecher's sermons. Mr. Beecher belongs not to any one 
denomination, but to the world, and men of all beliefs 
claim their share in him. When a large mind, coupled 
with a large heart, and both joined to a large body, 
speaks, one may be sure that there will be something 
worth hearing. It is remarkable that the sermons of one 
who has so much personal "magnetism," and who en- 
chains his audience so completely, are so thoroughly 
enjoyable when read without the charm of the speaker's 
voice. In our corps we have some four or five widely 
different denominations represented, and they all unite 
in this commendation of Beechcr's sermons. We symc- 
times wonder whether Mr. Beecher is greater in the pul- 
pit than he is out of it. We enjoy an occasional visit to 
his church, but we still more enjoy his too infrequent 
visits to our office. If one is sad, he touches his sympa- 
thies. If one is jocular, he can find no one more ready 
to join him than II. W. B. Docs one wish to talk horti- 
culture, agriculture, art, literature, or religion, there is 
the same readiness. It is largely to the fact that Beecher 
is cultivated in all his faculties, and not a one-sided man, 
that his power is due. Let a naturalist try to catch him 
and he is ready for him. Let a Wall Street Broker take 
him up, and be knows all about Wall Street. He can talk 
to the boys at West Point or address a Peace Society, deliv- 
er a better horticultural address than any one wc know of, 
and the next day preach a sermon worth hearing, worth 
printing, and reading aud preserving and reading over 
again. We expect to get overhauled for what we have 
said, for our friend is— contrary to the general belief— a 
modest man. Let us have more Beechers. 
Draining without Outlets, — E. N. 
Leighton, Lynn, Mass., wants to drain a lot (50 ft. by 100 
ft.) without the expense of digging a drain across adjoin- 
ing property. There is one chance in a hundred that he 
may be able to do it. If a well, dug early in the spring, 
will not be filled to within a few feet of the top during 
the wettest weather, then, by digging or boring deep 
holes at distances of 20 feet from each other, and filling 
them to within 2 feet of the surface with small stones, 
the drainage may be made complete. This system will 
work only when an impervious subsoil is underlaid by a 
very porous under stratum which has a free outlet, so that 
water will at no time remain in it. Soils so circum- 
stanced, no matter what may be their character, are al- 
most always well drained naturally. Porous under strata 
usually have no outlet, and arc themselves gorged with 
water in wet seasons, so that by tapping them we are 
more likely to get water than to get rid of it. If the bore- 
drain plan will not work,— and generally it will not,— 
there is nothing to be done in the case but t«> get an out- 
let, for without an outlet a drain is like a barrel withouta 
spigot ; you can get water iuto it, but cannot draw it off, 
and an underdraiu, whether made of stone or of tile, filled 
with stagnant water, is worse than no drain at all. 
