330 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[September, 
herbivorous animal and is considered a great 
nuisance in Australia. Sheep-raising is one of 
the important industries of that country, and 
the Kangaroos are troublesome, as they destroy 
large amounts of pasturage. The flesh of the 
animal is highly prized, and our informant thinks 
that there is nothing in the world in the way of 
a soup to equal that made from a Kangaroo's 
tail, and that a, fillet or tenderloin of the animal 
is better than any other meat. — Since the fore- 
going was in type we have received from Mr. 
John Anderson, Allansford, Victoria, some 
specimens of Kangaroo skins, treated in differ- 
ent ways. One, dressed with the hair on, 
would, we think, make excellent robes. The 
friend above referred to says that the skin, 
tanned in this way, makes a very warm and 
light overcoat. Another specimen is grained, 
and of the natural color, very soft, and feels 
much like kid, while another aud stouter piece 
has been blackened, and seems much like light 
calfskin. AVe are told that the chief objection 
to leather made from Kangaroo skiu is, that it 
stretches to an inconvenient extent. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— Ho. 69. 
When I was a boy my father made me keep 
the accounts of his farm, aud I soon began to 
take an interest in it, He had ten children, and 
worked hard to give us a good education. When 
crops were poor, or prices low, it was with a. 
heavy heart he sat down at night to tell me what 
to write in the book, and though young, I soon 
learned to sympathize with him. Like all good 
men, he lived for his children. He worked hard 
for us, denied himself many luxuries that we 
might have a good time, would wear an old bat 
that we might have new shoes, and often walked 
that we might ride. Never was a happier set 
of frolicking young ones on a farm. And there 
is not one of us to this day that does not love 
farming. But those who talk of the " inde- 
pendent life " of a farmer, of his freedom from 
care and anxiety, merely show their ignorance. 
There was plenty of anxiety on our farm. 
There was anxiety about the weather, about the 
crop9, about the stock, and, above all, about the 
health and life and limbs of the children. "We 
ought all to have been killed half a dozen times 
over. One was kicked by a horse aud ran a 
narrower chance of life than he has ever done 
since, and yet he has been through the war, 
has been up and down the Mississippi ou a steam- 
boat, and traveled the whole length of the Erie 
Railroad. "Aunt Hattie," as we now call her, 
had her head cut open with a donkey cart, and 
a sad house we had for many days as she lay 
between life and death. Another sister when 
three years old, caught hold of the spokes of 
the fore wheel of a heavily loaded wagon, and 
was thrown forward, and the whetl grazed her 
whole body. My father was driving, heard the 
scream, and looked round in time to see the 
danger, but not in time to stop the team. For- 
tunately the nurse held on to the child and 
jerked her out of the rut before the hind wheel 
reached her. Last fall, the eight children who 
are still living all met together, and it was found 
that every one of us had some scar that remained 
to remind us of the accidents of early life. 
But what I wanted to say was that the habit 
of keeping the books for my father was not only 
a benefit to me, but a great comfort to him. He 
told me his fears, and I know now that it must 
have been a great relief to him. It certainly 
was a great advantage to me. If I know any- 
thing about fanning^ I learned most of it from 
my father. And I am fully persuaded that if a 
farmer would provide a nice, substantially bound 
book, and induce his son to write down every 
day at his dictation all that was done on the 
farm, it would go a great ways towards making 
a good farmer of him. It would be useful. 
I can imagine some such record as this: 
September 1st. — " Very dry weather. Culti- 
vating for wheat." And then the boy would be 
very likely to ask when he was going to sow, 
and what kind and why. 
Sept. 2. — " Sow had ten little pigs last night, 
butlcilled two of them." " It is too bad," says 
the boy, " to lose them now, pigs are so scarce 
and high, and they say a rail nine inches high 
put round the pen, six inches or so from the 
boards, will prevent a sow from lying on the 
pigs." "I thought of doing it," says the farm- 
er, " but I could not find the hammer, and we 
have no spikes." Mental reflection by the boy: 
"I left the hammer in the wagon." By the 
father: "Those two pigs at six weeks old 
would have sold for ten dollars." 
Sept. 3. — " Thrashing. The five acres of 
Diehl wheat on the summer-fallow gave 150 
bushels ; the 10 acres of Mediterranean after 
oats gave only 120 bushels." "If we had sown 
it all to Diehl," says the boy, " we should have 
had 450 bushels instead of 270." If the father 
is a sensible man he would correct this remark, 
and point out the fact that it was not the variety, 
but the condition and character of the land 
that made the difference. 
Sept. 4. — "One of the horses sick." He had 
been on the thrashing machine all day, and the 
driver, to save his own horses, had made the 
farmer's do pretty much all the work. This 
horse was on the outside, and his end of the 
evener was no longer than that of the horse 
having the inside tract, and he had to draw 
just as hard as the other and walk much faster. 
Sept. 5. — "Drew the wheat to the city. Left 
at home 10 bushels of Diehl for seed, and 20 
bushels of Mediterranean. The Diehl overrun 
4 bushels, and the Mediterranean fell short 
3 bushels. Got $3 a bushel for the Diehl, and 
$1.75 for the Mediterranean." The five acres 
of Diehl came to $280, and the ten acred of 
Mediterranean, $175. 
Now let a farmer tell his son such facts, and 
let him write them down as they occur, and the 
chances are that five years will not pass before 
the farm will be at least partially drained, weeds 
will have disappeared, thirty bushels of wheat 
and two tons of hay per acre will be the rule 
rather than the exception, and there will be lit- 
tle danger of that young man seeking a clerk- 
ship in the city. 
One of the editors of the Agriculturist asks 
me to tell them more about the new implements 
and machines I use on the farm, so that they 
can compare notes. By aud by I will do so. 
It is never safe to recommend a new thing with- 
out giving it repeated trials. For instance, the 
arrangement for fastening scythes to the snaths 
by means of a screw is far superior to the old 
iron band and wedges. But if the manufactur- 
er had been here the other morning it would 
have been a relief to have given him "a piece 
of my mind." We have about a dozen old 
snaths on the farm, more or less, but have al- 
ways considerable trouble in "hanging the 
scythes," and getting started for an hour or 
two's work in the morning, while the dew is on ; 
so to make sure of no delay I bought three 
new snaths and scythes with this ingenious con- 
trivance for fastening on tlie scythe. We did 
not use them three times before two of them 
were broken, and the scythes would not fit any 
other snath. The whole trouble lies in the fact 
that the band is made of cast-iron, and when 
the screw is turned a little too tight, it snaps off 
like a pipe stem. If the hardware stores kept 
these cast-iron bands and screws on hand so 
that we could get two or three with each snath, 
if would not be so bad ; but now when this little 
bit of casting breaks the whole thing is useless, 
and we must slop work and send six or eight 
miles to the store for a new snath. 
I tried one new thing this spring that pleases 
me in every Way, and that is Cahoon's Broad- 
cast Seed Sower. I drilled in all my grain, but 
we sowed the clover and grass seeds with it on 
the wheat, aud I think the seed was distributed 
more evenly and with less labor than it can be 
done by hand, and in less than half the time. 
Another new thing I have tried this spring 
and summer, which gives unbounded satisfac- 
tion, is one of the Collins' Cast Cast-steel Plows. 
Of course these things are not new. I am told 
that there are a hundred thousand of the Col- 
lins' plows in use, principally, I suppose, at the 
West. They are, however, as well adapted to 
our soils as to the prairies. 
I would never get a new thing unless it was 
a decided improvement over the old ones to 
which the men have become accustomed. And 
another point is worthy of mention. When 
you use more than one machine it is desirable 
to have them all of one kind. A farmer with 
one hundred acres of hay to cut, especially if 
he has much grain to cut also, should have two 
mowing machines. Aud he should have them 
both alike. If botli should break the same day 
it is not probable that the same pieces would 
bieak in each, and he could fix up one ma- 
chine from the two, and keep it running until 
the broken pieces could be obtained. I fore- 
saw we were going to have haying, hoeing, and 
harvesting all together this year, and sent for a 
new Wood's mower and kept both of them go- 
ing. Bad as the weather was, I never had such 
an easy time with haying. Most of my neigh- 
bors were behind, and they were glad to send 
men to help me to bind and draw in grain if I 
would send a machine to cut hay. Blessed be 
the inventors and manufacturers of mowing 
machines ! say I. I know of no machine so near 
absolute perfection as a good mower. "You 
had to mow the hay on this side-hill by hand," 
I said to Mr. Frank Cornell, as we were walking 
over the University farm at Ithaca. " Oh, no !" 
he replied, "I cut it with my Buckeye mower." 
" It does not seem possible," I said, " that any 
machine could work on such a hill, sloping in 
all directions, and about as steep as the pyra- 
mids of Egypt." "I had no trouble at all," he 
replied, " only where it was very steep I jumped 
off and held the machine so that it should not 
tumble over !" 
I have a horse that, while not absolutely sick, 
is decidedly "below par." He has incipient in- 
dications of spring halt ; acts a little as though 
he was foundered ; his hoofs are soft and peel 
off on scraping them, and look very much as 
though they were affected by a species of dry 
rot. I do not think he is broken winded, but 
he coughs worse than any horse I ever heard. 
He has a swelling on the windpipe close under 
the jaw, known as bronchocele. It has just oc- 
curred to me that perhaps he has got a stick in 
his throat, and has had for months. 
I got the idea from John Johnston. He says 
that several years ago a friend of his had a 
