130 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
IApbil, 
The Btrap from the horse power was passed up between 
the cross-pieces, and one of them was left in front of the 
thresher to support a platform for the person tending the 
machine to stand on, and a light strip was attached to the 
brake and extended up to the platform, to start and stop 
the machine without going down. The space under the 
shaker was left open for the grain to fall through to 
the Door beneath. The great benefit of this arrangement 
is that you have no caving-up to do while threshing, and 
the straw is easily thrown off into the bays on each side 
and avoids throwing the unthreshed grain so far down, 
and then having to pitch tJie straw up. This plan cer- 
tainly has great advantages in a single floored barn, but 
if the horse power can be placed on the floor below, the 
merits of this arrangement will not be so striking. 
Smg-gestioms about Tlii-esUiiig' Ma- 
chines.— J. P. Dilworth, of PortPenn, Del., offers some 
suggestions to makers of threshing machines, which are 
worth their attention, for many large grain raisers doubt- 
less find similar difficulty. He writes : " Since steam has 
been brought into use for threshing grain, we have power 
sufficient to do a great deal more work if we had the 
threshers. We have been using the Pitt, Guiger, and 
WestenhouBe machines ; two of them are made in New 
York, and one in Virginia. They are all deficient in 
ability to separate and clean. We are now using the 
Westenhouse machine, which is a very good one, with an 
eight-horse engine ; but when we feed the cylinder (36 
inches, and large enough.) to its full capacity, it wastes a 
great deal of grain, by carrying it over with the straw — 
more with oats than wheat. The fan also is defective, 
not being near large enough ; we want a fan capable of 
threshing and cleaning from the chaff sixty or seventy 
bushels of wheat, and one hundred to one hundred and 
twenty of oats per hour. The cylinder of the Westen- 
house machine is able to do that amount of threshing 
with the power we use, and the consequence is the 
separating and cleaning capacity of the machine is over- 
taxed, and grain is wasted. Now, the separating might 
be done either by lengthening the straw carrier, (making 
two might be preferable, as it would give more strength,) 
or putting revolving prongs between the elevator and 
straw earner, so arranged that they would not catch the 
straw, yet shake all the grain out. The fan would have 
to be made larger ; in other words, we want a more 
elaborate machine ; a little additional weight would be no 
objection ; it would be on trucks, and there would be no 
trouble in moving it about. Last summer I had to carry 
my grain fan to the yard, and take the grain from the 
thresher, and put it through it before sending to market ; 
this trouble might all be avoided by having an additional 
fan attached ; it need not be large, and could be arranged 
on top of the machine, with elevators to carry the grain 
from where it is deposited by the first cleaning to the fan 
above, the tailings from that conducted to the C3'lin- 
der, and the grain run into bags ready for market." 
Economy of IFeedimg Tairmips. — 
•C. E. T., 1 ' of Topsfield, Mass., writes as follows: — 
" Owing to the scarcity and high price of English hay, I 
have kept my few sheep this winter on low meadow hay, 
mostly 'buckhorn, 1 with about one quart of sliced tur- 
nips to each per day. They like this fare extremely well, 
are in good order, and the lambs so far (Feb. 18) are strong 
and active. I also give to my oxen, and other stock, 
which consume coarse hay, and to cows not in milk, a 
few turnips daily, much to their gratification and apparent 
benefit. By so doing I have been enabled to use up most 
of my coarse hay, and with a little English I estimate one 
ton of coarse hay and one ton of turnips fully equivalent 
to one ton best English hay for sustenance of cattle." 
■ I —o n ■ » 
The Pine Barrens of the South. 
"' X. Y." writes as follows : Along the whole 
extent of the Atlantic coast, from Hew Jersey 
to Georgia, and thence along the Gulf to the 
Mississippi Biver, stretches a strip of sandy 
land, varying from fifty to one hundred miles in 
width, and known as the "Pine Barrens." On 
this land, the cultivation of the common agri- 
cultural staples is not remunerative; hence 
the land, while not suited to the production of 
wheat and corn, may produce other plants of 
value, and it would be much better to search 
out such plants as are suited to the soil, than to 
condemu the land as utterly worthless. By cul- 
tivating only, or at least chiefly, such plants 
as prosper in a sandy soil, we believe the 
cultivation of the Pine lands can be made 
remunerative. The watermelon, muskmelon, 
squash, sweet potato, &c, are known to thrive 
better and produce more abundantly in sandy 
soil than in clayey or even loamy upland, but 
others have not had so extensive a trial. The 
groundnut or peanut delights in a warm, sandy 
soil. It yields abundantly, and the demand for 
it, for making oil, is unlimited. It is equal to 
corn for fattening pork. The Scuppernong grape 
is said to thrive luxuriantly on the dryest sands, 
sending down its long roots to the marl beds, 
and bearing heavy crops. If this grape thrives, 
may not some kinds of the improve' 3 grapes be 
equally suited to such soil ? Field jeans will 
often pay where scarcely any other crop will, 
and some of the pole beans, if not even the 
Lima bean, may be cultivated, and should be 
tried on a moderate scale byway of experiment. 
There need be no fear of over stocking the mar- 
ket with this delicious vegetable. The castor 
oil bean will pay well on moist bottom lands. 
"We import annually several millions of dollars 
worth of liquorice. This plant luxuriates in a 
sandy soil, and, once planted, requires scarcely 
any cultivation. Instead of importing, we ought 
to export it largely. The peach, apricot and 
nectarine are known to succeed well. South of 
Norfolk the fig stands the winter in the open 
air, and ought to be cultivated largely. Some 
years since a planter near Mobile planted a largo 
field with figs, for the purpose of feeding pigs, 
saying the yield per acre was greater than that 
of corn, and the pork was sweeter, while the 
trees required no attention or labor. The arrow- 
root of Bermuda, and the tapioca orManihot of 
Brazil, aTe also worthy of trial, and will richly 
reward the labor bestowed upon them if found 
to succeed. Madder will pay when labor and 
capital are more abundant. For forage, different 
kinds of millet and sorghum promise well. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 40. 
I have just lost the best cow I had. It was 
the one I paid the Doctor one hundred and ten 
dollars for last fall. She died of puerperal or 
milk fever. It is seldom that this disease occurs 
later than four days after calving. But this cow 
was not attacked till the eighth day. She had a 
hard time calving, and did not cleanse for three 
days, and then not till we had given her a dose 
of ergot. After that she appeared perfectly well, 
and I thought all danger was past. She ate 
heartily, and gave her usual quantity of milk 
the morning before she was taken sick. But the 
next morning she refused her food, and gave 
only about two quarts of milk, and in half an 
hour afterwards was trembling all over, and so 
weak that she could hardly stand. She seemed 
to be paralyzed across the loins. We put her into 
a warm basement cellar, where she could not be 
disturbed. She had barely strength enough to 
walk in, and had an inclination to stick her 
head in the ground, which is said to be one of 
the symptoms of the disease. She soon fell 
down, perfectly prostrated; our efforts to re- 
store her proved of no avail, and she died in 
two days and a half from the time of the attack. 
In England this disease is called " the Drop," 
and is most troublesome in dairies where the 
cows are kept in high condition. Mr. Spooner, 
an eminent veterinary surgeon, states that, so 
far as his experience goes, common cows, when 
highly fed, are more liable to the disease than 
Shorthorns or Herefords. He says: "In a 
rather large suckling dairy of Shorthorns, in the 
vicinity of the writer, the disease is scarcely 
known but by name ; whilst in another, con- 
sisting for the most part of Norman and cross- 
bred animals, the loss has been most dishearten- 
ing to the owners. One thing, however, is clear: 
that the mortality is greater among cows that 
are highly kept." The Shorthorns, however, 
that escaped were fed just as high as the com- 
mon cows, and were quite as fat. The reason 
why highly fed Shorthorns escape, While highly 
fed common cows are attacked, is due probably 
to the fact that the Shorthorns are more accus- 
tomed to high feeding. They have been bred 
for the purpose of converting a large amount of 
food into beef and butter. What would be an un- 
natural state of fatness in a common cow would 
be no more than the ordinary condition of a 
good Shorthorn. I have a thoroughbred Essex 
sow that, compared with ordinary sows, was ex- 
cessively fat, and the Beacon and some of my 
other neighbors said it was impossible for such 
a sow to breed. But at ten months old she had 
a fine litter of six pigs. I have no doubt that a 
common sow as fat as she was would not have 
bred. As long as an animal is growing rapidly 
it should be allowed liberal feed. And in the 
case of animals that have been bred for genera- 
tions for the sole purpose of producing a large 
amount of flesh and fat in a short time, a fleshy 
condition is perfectly natural and will not prove 
injurious, unless carried to excess. 
A common cow cannot be stimulated to take 
on fat or give milk with as much safety as a 
Shorthorn, Hereford or Devon. It is perfectly 
true, as is sometimes said in opposition to im- 
proved breeds, that " they will not stand starva- 
tion as well as the natives." And, on the other 
hand, the so-called "natives" will not stand 
high feeding as well as the improved breeds. 
And this is probably the true explanation of the 
fact mentioned by Mr. Spooner. Those of us, 
who, like the Doctor, wish to feed high for the 
purpose of getting a large quantity of rich 
milk, must get cows that have considerable 
Shorthorn, Ayrshire or Devon blood in them. 
Stephens, in his Book of the Farm, recom- 
mends giving cows four pounds of oil-cake a 
day for a month before and a month after calv- 
ing, for the purpose of preventing costiveness. 
Before he adopted this practice he lost two or 
three cows, but none afterwards. I gave my 
cow a little after she calved, made into a mash 
with warm water, but none before ; and there I 
think was the mistake. She was a great milker 
and had been used to high feeding, and probably 
needed richer food than we gave her. But she 
was rather fleshy and I was afraid to give her 
grain. I am satisfied now that it would have 
been better to have given her a little corn meal 
or oil-cake for a month or two before calving. 
Misfortunes rarely come singly. I had a 
number of nice early lambs that we kept in the 
basement cellar, and when the cow was taken 
sick we turned them out to make room for the 
cow. There were two sows in the yard and they 
got into the pen and ate up five of the lambs. 
Have just been reading the Agricultural An- 
nual for 1867. It is quite a book, and I am glad 
that it is bound in cloth as well as paper. 
Works of this kind, which are designed for re- 
ference, are well worth an extra quarter when 
bound in cloth. Paper covered books are a 
nuisance. They are always lying round lose, 
and are never to be found when wanted. 
The editor writes me that he intends to make 
the next volume much better than this. I suspect 
he is " fishing for a compliment," or else he is 
a more modest man than New Yorkers are sup- 
posed to be ! Certainly this Annual is a most 
valuable work, though I presume, with more 
