340 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Decembeb, 
away. The table placed in the center will be 
found a great convenience in any smoke-house. 
The Purple-top Strap-leaf Turnip. 
A farmer speaking of this variety, a few days 
since, in the office of the Agriculturist, said : — 
"They are so uniformly good, in fact so nearly 
all that we can ask, that there is very little in- 
ducement for farmers in this part of the coun- 
try to experiment with the new English sorts, 
except the new Swedes and Rutabagas." In 
addition to this, we quote the testimony of Mr. 
Harris, of the Genesee Farmer, who writes: 
"The Strap-leaf Turnip is certainly a splendid 
variety to sow late in the season, after early po- 
tatoes, &c. I sowed them this year at different 
times in August. The first sown are now (Oc- 
tober 11) quite large. George brought in one 
this morning that was twenty-two inches in cir- 
cumference. I had the greatest difficulty in 
persuading the German women to hoe them thin 
enough. They could not be persuaded to cut 
them out more than four or five inches apart, 
and in a week after I made them go over them 
again and take out every other one. It is a 
great mistake to leave them too thick — and it is 
certainly very absurd to leave them without 
hoeing. One great advantage in raising turnips 
is, that they require good culture. This they 
must have ; it is useless to try to raise them 
without ; but if the land is in good condition, 
and the turnips are singled out and the land 
well hoed, there is no crop which grows so 
rapidly or which will please the farmer so 
much. Next to underdraining, the raising of a 
good crop of turnips is one of the most fasci- 
nating employments connected with farming." 
What is Oil Cake, or Oil Meal? 
This inquiry comes from a dairy woman, who 
wants to employ every means to increase the 
butter yield of her herd. The common veget- 
able oils are, most of them, expresed from seeds. 
Hemp seed yields an oil, so do cotton seed, grape 
seed, poppy seed, etc. Linseed oil comes fi-om 
flax, and castor oil from the castor bean. These 
o:ls are extracted from the raw seeds, or after 
roasting or heating them, by subjecting them to 
heavy pressure by hydraulic presses. The res- 
idue after the oil is extracted, is usually in the 
form of an oblong or circular cake, two or 
three inches or more in thickness, and quite 
tough and hard. The residue of the castor bean 
easily breaks up, so that it is not found in mar- 
ket in the form of a cake, but the beans or parts 
of beans are pressed flat, and stick together very 
feebly. This is called " castor pomace ; " it is 
never fed to animals, but is highly valued as a 
manure. Since the outbreak of the rebellion, 
hut little cotton seed cake has been in market. 
This is prepared from the hulled seed, and the 
more perfectly hulled, the better the character 
of the cake. It usually comes in the form of 
meal, which is simply the cake ground. The 
good qualities are light colored, but darker than 
Indian meal ; the meal from poorly hulled seed 
shows an abundance of black specks, and this is 
deleterious if fed to stock. Rape cake is from 
the seed of a plant of the cabbage kind, which is 
raised for illuminating oil. It is seldom seen in 
this country. The residue from hemp seed after 
pressing out the oil is valuable for manure. 
Linseed {flax seed) cake, however, is always 
meant when "oil cake" is mentioned. This 
comes both in the form of cake and meal, " oil- 
meal " in market, and immense quantities are 
exported from this country to Great Britain an- 
nually. It is usually fed upon cut feed to 
milch cows or fattening animals, allowing from 
one-quarter pound to six pounds per head 
— the latter quantity being given only to full- 
grown beeves. All animals must be gradually 
accustomed to it, or it will have very undesira- 
ble purgative effects. It should always be used 
in connection with coarse fodder— hay, straw 
or stalks. "When only the cake can be obtained, 
it may be broken up, soaked or cooked till it 
becomes a mucilaginous broth, salted a little, and 
sprinkled on the fodder. Great care should be 
exercised in feeding it to calves. The same re- 
marks are applicable to cotton seed meal. Good 
linseed cake contains about 13 per cent, of oil ; 
cotton seed cake, 16 i; of albuminous (muscle- 
forming) substances, linseed cake, 28i ; cotton 
seed cake, 41 k. The amount of nitrogen in the 
former is4i per cent. ; in the latter over 7. Mu- 
cilaginous matters, gum and sugar, in linseed 
cake greatly exceed those in cotton cake ; but 
though valuable for food, the great value of 
these articles depends upon the proportion of 
oily and of nitrogenous, that is, albuminous 
substances. The amount of phosphoric acid in 
the ash is also quite considerable. This, with a 
large part of the nitrogen, appears in the ma- 
nure, and greatly increases its value, espe- 
cially if from full grown fattening animals. 
■ . — i ■ 
The Diminutive Cattle of Brittanny. 
Little cows of this breed are becoming quite 
fashionable in England, and some have been 
imported here. Some inquiries addressed to the 
American Agriculturist are answered by an extract 
from Mr. Flint's report of the International Exhi- 
bition of 1861 : " The little Bretagne cows 
pleased me exceedingly. Standing only about 
three feet high on their legs — the most fashiona- 
able height — most black and white, now and 
then, but rarely, a red and white ; they are as 
docile as kittens, and look pretty enough to be- 
come the kitchen pet of the hard pressed moun- 
tain or hillside farmer, with pastures too short 
for a grosser animal. Ten pounds of hay will 
suffice for their limited wants for twenty-four 
hours, and they would evidently fill a seven 
quart pail as quick and long as any other cow. 
Those pretty cows will often hold out in milk, 
so the herdsmen said, from fifteen to eighteen 
months after calving, and often begin with the 
first calf with six or seven quarts a day. The 
horn is fine, not unlike the Jerseys, but smaller 
and tapering off gradually, and the escutch- 
eon or milk marks of Guenon generally very 
good. Good cows are held from sixty to sev- 
enty dollars a head, a fancy price of course, but 
I am not sure that they would not pay six per 
cent, on the investment as well as most ' fancy 
stocks ' " — It would be an expensive matter to 
import many at the present rates of exchange, 
and when good cows can be bought for $50 to 
$80, and are worth as much as they cost for beef. 
=»H ■■■ — _« 
Rules for Shoeing Horses. 
Most of our farriers shoe without exer- 
cising any judgment, trying only to make a 
well appearing job. A London veterinary sur- 
geon gives the following rules for shoeing horses: 
1. After having taken off the old shoe, shorten 
the toe, and remove all the dead and loose parts 
of the hoof. Do not cut the sole or pare the 
frog, unless when the foot has received an in- 
jury from a nail or otherwise, when it must be 
cut out. 2. Let the shoe be of equal thickness, 
or rather thinner at the heel. The ground and 
foot surface should be perfectly level. The shoe 
should be light on the heel. Too many nails 
are objectionable, and these should be kept as 
far as possible from the heels. 3. For the hind 
feet there is no objection to calkins, though 
they are of doubtful benefit. Horses travel 
much better without them. The hind shoes 
are made thicker at the toes than at the quar- 
ters; the nails also can be put closer to the 
heels without causing inconvenience. 4. Side 
clips should be avoided ; they destroy the hoof; 
this is the case when the nails are too close to- 
gether. The feet should never be rasped, as it 
destroys the enamel of the hoofs, renders them 
brittle, and causes sandcrack and lameness. 
Practical Jokes Played by a Horse. 
— # — 
Though many curious tricks and mischievous 
but harmless capers have been played by horses 
within our own knowledge, yet it is hard to 
give credence to the following anecdote from 
an English paper: "There was (some years 
ago) a very fine horse in the possession of Hen- 
ry Meux & Co., the eminent brewers, used as a 
dray horse, but so tiactable that he was left 
sometimes without any restraint to walk about 
the yard, and return to the stable, according to 
his fancy. In the yard there were also a few 
pigs of peculiar breed, fed on grain and corn, 
and to these pigs the horse had evidently an in- 
superable objection. There was a deep trough 
in the yard holding water for the horses, where 
this horse went often taking his mouth full of 
corn. AVhen he reached the trough, he let the 
corn fall near it on the ground, and when the 
young swine approached it (for the old ones 
kept aloof), he would suddenly seize one of 
them by the tail, pop him into the trough, and 
then caper about the yard, seemingly delighted 
with the frolic. The noise of the pig soon 
brought the men to his assistance, who knew 
from experience what was the matter, while the 
horse indulged in all sorts of antics, to show his 
glee, and then returned quietly to his stable," 
Tools, Wagons, etc—" Taking Time by 
the Forelock." 
There are people enough who delay buying 
tools, and having old ones repaired, until just 
when they want to use them, so no reader of 
the Agriculturist need feel obliged to be of the 
number. The counsels of the Genesee Farm- 
er are good on this point, so we copy them : 
" I was so annoyed last spring by the delays 
in getting plows, implements, &c, ready for 
.work, that I am determined to have every tool, 
machine, cultivator, plow, &c, put in repair 
this fall. I have already commenced. It is 
just the work for a rainy day. I find it a great 
convenience to have on hand bolts and screws 
of various sizes. "With these, and proper tools, 
an ordinary man can repair many things as 
well as a blacksmith. It would be a great sav- 
ing in the long run if we were more careful in 
cleaning and painting wagons, carts, machines, 
cultivators, plows, etc., at this season of 
the year, before they are put away for the 
winter. Paint is now expensive, but so are im- 
plements, and they would undoubtedly last 
much longer, and certainly look none the worse. 
I admire the farmer who keeps things snug-, 
with every thing in its place. Nothing looks 
worse, or is more unprofitable, than a slip-shod 
style of farming. But it requires constant care 
