98 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[March, 
When and Where to Irrigate. 
■ 
In the almost rainless climates of some of our 
new Territories, of course, we must irrigate if 
we mean to have any crops. But is irrigation 
of any use in a climate giving forty-five or 
more inches of rain, as we have from Maine to 
Texas? Under certain circumstances we an- 
swer, very decidedly, yes. It will pay ts irrigate 
any well drained land, and within certain appre- 
ciable limits, the more water you can get to pass 
through the soil the better for the growing crop. 
It might pay to raise water by wind or steam- 
power under certain circumstances, but we do 
not think that time has come yet in ordinary 
farming. At least, if it has, it has yet to be 
proved, and some one has to pay a pretty heavy 
bill for the experiment. But there are many 
thousands of acres where the water for irriga- 
tion is already raised, and it only needs dams 
and ditches to turn it over these acres. There 
is no expensive machinery to be purchased, and 
after the dams and sluiceways are made, but 
little labor is required to turn the water on and 
off as it is needed. Two farmers in this State, 
A. B. Dickinson, of Steuben County, and the 
late L. D. Clift, of Putnam, have proved beyond 
all controversy that it pays largely to turn 
brooks that have sufficient fall out of their chan- 
nels upon the adjoining upland. The impres- 
sion that irrigation is only of service in the sum- 
mer in time of drouth, is erroneous, and it is 
l his error, doubtless, that has prevented many 
from investing in tins cheapest form of manure. 
There are many brooks that run bank full in 
winter that are mere rills in summer. Mr. Clift 
for many years turned his stream over the ad- 
joining meadows, and kept them running all 
winter. The crop of grass was more than 
doubled at once, and there was a steady increase 
of the crop from year to year without any other 
kind of manure. The impression, too, is quite 
common that this water-made grass is not as 
nutritious as that made from top-dressing with 
stable manure. This was also proved to be an 
error. The grass grows with great luxuriance, 
wherever the water runs, is as easily cured, and 
smells as sweet. If it is any less nutritious, the 
Shorthorn grades annually fattened upon this 
farm never found it out. The water furnishes 
the aliment the grass needs just as surely as sta- 
ble manure, and probably chemical analysis 
would not show much difference in composi- 
tion. A good deal is brought down in the sedi- 
ment which the clearest of brooks have in much 
larger quantity than any one suspects who lias 
never studied the subject. Fish eulturists tell 
us that even spring water has to be filtered 
through five or more flannel screens, before it 
is fit to hatch eggs. These filters are so cover- 
ed with dirt, that they have to be changed 
daily. Brooks, although they seem to he trans- 
parent, are much more foul than spring-water, 
and after every rainfall, are usually discolored 
with matter held in suspension. Our heaviest 
rains occur in winter and spring, and the amount 
of sediment deposited by a stream kept, flowing 
over a meadow for six months would be very 
large. But this is only one source of the sup- 
ply of plant-food. Water is a powerful solvent, 
and is all the while acting upon the stones and 
minute particles of soil through which it flows. 
It is all the while making plant-food. Of course, 
much moreahment for plants must be prepared, 
where there is flowage for six months, than 
there could be by the usual rainfall. What- 
ever the philosophy of the fact may be, there 
can be no doubt of the fact itself. Irrigation 
alone will increase the productiveness of any 
ordinary soil, and if persistently followed, will 
in time clothe it with a heavy sod. Near the 
Shore Line Railroad, in Groton, Conn., a deep 
cut was made into a bank to furnish earth for 
filling in a wharf, about a dozen years ago. 
For many square rods nothing but gravel was 
left overflowed by a spring. This once barren 
gravel is now covered every season with luxu- 
riant grasses, and the only ameliorating agents 
have been the spring-water and the atmosphere. 
Those who have brooks running through their 
farms should put them at once to the work of 
irrigation. 
How to Catch an Owl. 
Owls are very destructive to poultry, espe- 
cially in the breeding season, and are much more 
dangerous than hawks, inasmuch as they pay 
their visits to the roosts in the night. There is 
no effectual safeguard against their visits unless 
3'ou have the hennery made owl-proof. Most 
farmers make their roosts under au open shed, 
or upon the trees, which are as free to birds of 
prey as to the hens. Chickens are very deli- 
cate food for young owls, and sometimes a 
dozen will be missing from the perch in a night, 
and their feathers and claws be found the next 
day in a neighboring owl's nest. Old hens will 
be taken and their heads be eaten off and the 
carcass be dropped uuder the tree, quite too 
heavy for the owl to carry off. Not a moment 
should be lost when these depredations occur. 
Tie the dead fowl upon the limb or the perch 
where it was accustomed to roost, and shut up 
the other fowls. The dead fowl should be tied 
in a roosting position, so as to seem alive to the 
owl. Place a small steel-trap on the back of 
the hen and fasten it to a neighboring limb. 
The owl will generally make his appearance 
the following night, and in swooping down 
upon the back of the hen will find his claws se- 
curely fastened in the trap. A small rat-trap 
without teeth is the best. The teeth would be 
apt to cut off the legs or claws and release the 
owl. The trap will often save many days of 
hunting a mean, skulking enemy, who only 
plunders in the night. Connecticut. 
Like begets Like, or the Likeness of 
some Ancestor. 
This last part of the sentence is a very im- 
portant addition to the original formula, and 
but few farmers appreciate its force, or ever 
even think of it. 
If some one raises a well-turned boar and 
keeps him for service, the neighbors will soon 
brand him as a " likely-lookin' pig," and in a 
year or two he will have scattered his progeny 
over the country for miles around— generally 
without having produced the least improvement 
on the native breed. The reason for this is that 
the boar himself is of the native breed, and the 
slight influence of his individual excellence, 
which is due more to his feeding than to his 
breeding, is overborne by that of his long line 
of low-bred progenitors, whose blood fills his 
veins and asserts itself in his progeny. If he is 
crossed with extra good sows, and the descend- 
ants are well nurtured, and are bred carefully 
for many generations, there will in time be pro- 
duced a fixed type that will have impels enough 
to carry its improvement to all its successors. 
Or if the boar be of one of the well-established 
breeds like the Essex, no matter what the sows 
may be, there will be a marked improvement in 
all their progeny. A half-bred, Jersey bull-calf 
is sometimes raised for stock purposes, because 
he is individually a very promising animal. 
Now and then he may get a calf that will show 
the characteristics of the Jersey breed, but in nine 
cases out of ten his get will show more of the 
"native" than of the Jersey. Sometimes among 
dogs there will be one pup in a common litter 
that will look like a pure-bred " black-and-tan " 
terrier; but if this animal be used as a sire, his 
get may all be unmitigated " yaller dogs." A 
very handsome and very fast horse, used for 
service, may beget a county full of lunk-head 
colts ; or a stallion that is perfectly sound may 
beget colts that will almost universally have a 
tendency to blindness, spavin, or some other 
glaring defect. In the human race, black-eyed 
parents (both father and mother) not infre- 
quently have only light-eyed children. 
The causes of all these variations are invari- 
ably to be sought in the ancestry. These black- 
eyed parents had blue-eyed sires or dames some- 
where in their family history ; the good-looking 
horse had, among his progenitors, some in 
whom the defects that he perpetuated were 
prominent ; the black-and-tan dog had a flood 
of "yaller" blood in his veins; in the bull the 
Jersey influence was weakened by the mixture 
of common blood in his native dam ; and so 
we may go on through the whole chapter of 
breeding from mixed races. It is only where 
certain qualities are concentrated by a long line 
of close breeding that we may depend with any 
certainty on their reproduction. Although it 
is very rare that any quality appears in the 
progeny that was not a characteristic of some 
ancestor, more or less remote, it is certain that 
these characteristics of ancestors, even though 
remote, show a strong tendency to reappear. 
As an instance in point, we know a very good 
cow that is seven-eighths Jersey and one-eighth 
Ayrshire which might be sold to a good judge 
for a pure Ayrshire, having not the least ap- 
pearance of Jersey about her; yet her dam (one- 
quarter Ayrshire) looked like a pure Jersey, as 
do nearly all of her calves (one-sixteenth Ayr- 
shire). Here, m a single instance, in the third 
generation, the characteristics of the Ayrshire 
dam have reappeared in full force after she was 
dead and gone. Thorough-bred horses (English 
racehorses) always look like thorough-breds, 
never like Canucks or cart-horses. The full- 
blooded children of Jews— the only thorough- 
bred white race we usually see — always bear 
the Jewish face as unmistakably as the children 
of negroes carry their peculiarities. In these 
instances, both man and horse have bred so 
long in the pure line, that variations from the 
pure type are too remote to have influence. 
The deduction from the foregoing statements 
is, that we should breed only from thorough- 
bred sires. Personal or constitutional defects 
being absent, the great tiling to be regarded is 
pedigree. If you have your choice between two 
pedigreed animals, always take the handsomest 
and the best, but if you must choose between a 
somewhat inferior animal with a pedigree, and 
a perfect animal with au inferior pedigree, al- 
ways regard the pedigree as far outweighing 
individual excellence. Do not be misled by the 
superior beauty of the underbred beast. What 
you want of him is to transmit the qualities of 
his ancestors. His beauty, or want of beauty, 
he carries in his own person. The excellence 
or the defects that he will transmit to his de- 
scendants are an inheritance from his progen- 
itors, and your business is much more with 
them than with himself. In our opinion no 
farmer can afford to breed from any but a thor- 
ough-bred sire, if a thorough-bred is within 
