1867.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
the holluws and— well we have now quite a 
respectable "lawn" for a farm home. I advise 
any city man, who turns farmer, to attend to 
such things the first year — for if put off for 
more time, they will never be done at all ! 
I received a letter to-day from a subscriber to 
the Agriculturist in Illinois. " I would like," 
he says, " to get an apparatus for cooking food 
for a few hogs and neat cattle ; and I notice that 
in your 'Walks and Talks you mention that you 
have one ; and that D. R. Prindle, in his circu- 
lar, publishes testimonials from you. Do you 
use his steamer, and is it a convenient appara- 
tus, simple enough to be used without danger 
and without difficulty. Would his No. 2, have 
capacity to cook enough meal for, say 30 hogs 
and 10 steers ? Or is there a better than his ?" 
I have used Prindle's steamer for two or three 
years. There is no difficulty or danger in using 
it. And it is a very simple and convenient ap- 
paratus. Still it requires some brains to man- 
age it — and farm hands, you know, are rather de- 
ficient in that article. I have never had a man 
yet who did not think he could cook better and 
faster with an old-fashioned kettle. I have 
steamed a barrel of potatoes with it perfectly in 
'| 4 liour; but I have known a man to keep the 
steamer going all day on one barrel, and not 
have the potatoes cooked at night ! A boy 
generally, after a few weeks training, manages 
it better than a man, because less prejudiced. 
But it must be confessed the steamer has 
faults. You can not tell when the water is get- 
ting low ; and we have several limes had it get 
dry, with a large fire underneath ; and in one 
case we poured water in when it had been dry 
for sometime, and was nearly red hot. We 
came near having an explosion — at least near 
enough to frighten the person pouring in the 
water, though I presume there was no real dan- 
ger, as the steam was not confined. Still it blew 
the water all over the room, and cracked the bot- 
tom of the steamer, and it cost me §22 to get it 
repaired. The steam is conveyed from the top 
of the cauldron in a vulcanized rubber tube, to an 
iron pipe, which goes through the meal or pota- 
toes, to the bottom of the barrel. This tube 
sometimes gets stopped up with the meal, part- 
ly or entirely. We obviate it by tying a piece 
of clothrouud the pipe. You andl would have 
no trouble in correcting it, but those ''hands !" 
There would be a great saving of heat if the 
cauldron was set in an arch. It is now sheathed 
with iron, and the heat radiates from it and is 
lost. On the whole, I do not think it would 
pay to cook food for neat cattle. I have tried 
it for milch cows and found it too much trouble. 
It will pay better to cook food for hogs than 
for any other animal. Their stomachs are 
smaller, and the)' require more concentrated 
food. In steaming meal, I find that it is neces- 
sary to put in considerable water, and to be care- 
ful to have it well mixed. If any of the meal 
is dry, it will remain dry, no matter how long 
you steam il. The advantage of the steamer 
over a common cauldron is, Ihat there is no 
danger of burning the meal. There is no abso- 
lute saving of heat ; it is simply more convenient, 
and when the steam is up, you can cook 
another barrel as soon as the first is done. 
Another gentleman writes me in regard to a 
mill for grinding grain. The one I have, on 
the whole, is not entirely satisfactory. It does 
not grind fast enoug'i. Once, when I attended 
to it myself, with four horses, I ground twenty- 
eight bushels of peas in three hours and ten 
minutes. Tliis would do very well. But it has 
never been done since. The men do not like it. 
Thej' prefer to take the grain to the miil and 
wait for it to be ground. And I find that if I 
set two of them at grinding, one to drive, and 
one to attend the mill, twenty-five or thirty 
bushels is all that they will grind in a day ! 
The men are not lazy either. I have as good 
men as can be found — married men who live 
in houses on the farm, and possessing more than 
average intelligence. It is a lack of energy and 
self-confidence. They think a thing " can't be 
done," and they are generally right, so far as 
they are concerned. But if you can attend to 
it yourself, all the time, get a good mill, and it 
will pay. I do not know, however, where there 
is a really good one. I wish the good people at 
the Agriculturist Office would look up the best 
one there is made, and offer it as a premium. 
When I was pulling some weeds out of the 
potatoes last summer, the Deacon stood near 
and shaking his head, said : " There is too 
much top." But one thing struck me : Notwith- 
standing that it had rained almost constantly for 
several weeks, I found in pulling up these large 
weeds that the soil was really quite dry. The po- 
tato tops completely covered the ground, and if 
there was any truth in the idea that growing 
crops shade the ground and keep it moist, this 
land would have been wet ; yet the soil pulled up 
on the roots of the weeds was dry as dust. A 
correspondent of the Country Gentleman men- 
tions a fact that appears to prove that weeds 
which shade the ground keep it moist. He saj-s : 
"To-day I was hoeiug in my garden, where 
the weeds were one incli high, and scarce ; there 
the ground was dry half an inch. One place, 
not two feet distant, had many weeds about four 
inches high, completely shading the ground. 
There, not a particle of dry earth is to be found." 
• The fact may well be as here stated. But 
what does it prove? It shows, perhaps, that 
weeds which shade the ground, check evapora- 
tion of moisture from the surface, and that for 
half an inch deep such soil is not as dry as that 
which is exposed to the sun and air. But does 
it show that the weeds do not take up/wm the 
soil beneath, a large quantity of water and evap- 
orate it through their leaves ? Had the soil 
where the weeds grew been examined three, 
four, or six inches deep, it would probably have 
been found drier than that which was bare. 
One thing is certain : plants, during all their 
growth, take up by their roots and evaporate 
through their leaves an enormous quantity of 
water. Many experiments have been made 
which demonstrate this fact. Those of Lawes 
are the most thorough and extensive. He ascer- 
tained with the 'greatest accuracy, the amount 
of water evaporated by wheat, barley, beans, 
peas and clover. A Wheat plant giving 
in grain and straw only one pound of dry sub- 
stance, evaporated during its growth, of 173 days, 
247.4 lbs. of water ; Barley, 357.8 lbs. ; Beans, 
208.8 lbs. ; Peas, 259.1 lbs. ; Clover (during 101 
days), 209.1 lbs. In other words, an acre of 
wheat of 30 bushels and 1800 lbs. of straw, 
would evaporate during the spring and summer, 
35o4 tons of water, or overJJw hundred gallons 
a day. A crop of clover of 2 tons per acre evap- 
orates in 101 days, 430 tons of water, or over 
1,000 gallons a day ! And yet a heavy crop 
of clover would shade the ground completely. 
This water actually passed through the plants. 
Of course the exhalation was greater as the 
plants increased in growth. Thus a wheat 
plant in March exhaled 14.1 grains of water a 
day; in April, 41 grains; in May 102 grains ; 
in June 1,177 grains ; in July 1,535 graiusa day. 
After this, as the plant begau to mature, the ex- 
halation decreased. — What we want for our 
growing crops is not a moist surface, half an 
inch deep, but a warm, moist soil underneath, 
where the roots ramify and imbibe their food. 
I wish something could be done to break up 
the practice of tying the lines round the back in 
plowing. It is very convenient, but it spoils the 
horses for ordinary driving. It is hard work to 
manage them with two hands, and no wonder. 
They have to pull some lazy plowman along 
every day by the bit, and when he wants them 
to back or turn round, he braces himself against 
the ground and pulls hard enough to spoil any 
decently broken horse in a week. I once saw a 
boy take the First Prize at one of the plowing 
matches of the Royal Agricultural Society, who 
drove his team without lines at all. Our horses 
are a little too lively for that, but still they might 
easily be trained to haw and gee, to back, to 
turn round, and to stop, without using the lines 
scarcely at all 
You " do not see how holding the lines round 
your back in plowing and cultivating spoils the 
horse for ordinary driving in a wagon and car- 
riage." . Simply because the poor horse has to 
pull hard on the bit all the time, and is obliged 
to set his neck so stiff that it soon loses all 
elasticity. And a stiff-necked horse .is always 
difficult and unpleasant to drive. My men say 
they have to put the lines round their back to 
keep the horses from going so fast, and to guard 
against breaking the plow in case you strike a 
stone. In the spring I mean to get some cord 
lines just long enough to put on the handles of 
the plow, putliug a short stick between the 
horses fastened to the inside of the bits, and 
then say, " if the horses go loo fast at first, they 
will soon get tired of it, and if you strike a 
stone and break a plow, you can go to the bam 
and get another one." The light wooden 
stretches between the horses' heads keeps them 
from crowding each other, or from getting 
too far apart, and you can plow much straighter. 
And then the saving of the leather lines is quite 
an object these times. 
Raising Clover Seed- 
This is one of the most profitable crops raided 
by northern farmers. It is not generally large 
in quantity, but so far as it goes, it yields large 
returns for the labor and money expended on 
it. From three to five bushels per acre may 
generally be expected, and this, selling at from 
$8 to §12 a bushel, is a good return for the la- 
bor. The culture of clover is simple and easy. 
The ground should be well plowed and har- 
rowed fine, the manuring moderate. Suchlands 
as bring good crops of wheat, oats, aud barley, 
will produce good crops of clover. The seed 
should be sown early, the earlier the better. 
As clover does not last usually more than one 
year for a full crop, it is generally best to seed 
down the laud to timothy at the same time ; the 
latter to form the main crop of the second year. 
When the clover has got well established, it is 
the practice of many to turn in their cattle aud 
sheep upon it. This furnishes excellent feed, 
aud the cropping of it does no harm to the 
clover, but rather helps il. The stock are kept 
here until the middle of .Tune, when they arc 
taken out, and the crop allowed to take a new- 
start. If kept on longer, the clover would not 
have lime to mature seed before frost. By being 
fed down pretty closely over the whole field, 
the plants now start uniformly, and all blossom 
and ripen their seeds nearly at once, which U a 
very important matter. Attention to this point 
