1867.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
213 
any one to do this in a simple manner. The 
water itself is the best teacher. Only commence, 
and you will soon have a system of ditches that 
■will distribute the water all over the land. 
" Floating up," as it is called, was practiced 
in England many years ago with considerable 
advantage, but it was found that irrigation pro- 
duced much better results, and the former prac- 
tice has been pretty much abandoned. " Float- 
ing up " is simply damming up a stream till the 
water overflows on the land. The water is 
allowed to remain ou the field only four or five 
days, as a longer period makes the grass coarse. 
The weir is then raised, aud the water allowed 
to flow off. There are places where this practice 
can be adopted with advantage, but irrigation 
is much better. What is meant by irrigation is 
conveying the water in a main ditch along the 
highest portion of the meadow, aud then dis- 
tributing it in small gutterson the land below, in 
such a way that the water will run all over the 
grass, half an inch or so deep, being careful that 
it never settles in pools or becomes stagnant. 
The more rapidly the water passes off, provided 
it does not wash iiviy the soil, the better. Of 
course there are a great many little details to 
be attended to, but when the general principles 
are understood, the details of the. system will 
easily be carried out by any intelligent farmer. 
Mr. Howard, in his lecture on Things in 
America, says : " The grass of America has 
nowhere the splendid, rich green of our English 
pastures. "Whether this arises wholly from the 
climate, I have some doubt. I think want of 
care in preparing the land, selection of seed and 
subsequent stocking have something to do with 
the miserable condition and appearance of 
American pastures." I think he is right. If 
we took as much pains with our meadows, as 
they do in England, we should raise as large 
crops. I am astonished at the effect a little top- 
dressing has on meadows. Even a little soil 
alone, spread on the grass, will impart a rich, 
green color. I suppose it acts as a mulch. Our 
clover is frequently better than it is in England, 
and our permanent meadows are brown be- 
cause they are permanently neglected. 
The main difficulty in all our agricultural im- 
provements is the high price of labor. And yet, 
compared with the cost of living, the men do 
not get exorbitant wages. The trouble is, that 
we do not provide steady employment. We 
hire extra help by the day, and pay high wages. 
But the men are out of employ one thirdof the 
time, and it consequently follows, that a man 
who gets §1.50 a day and loses one third of his 
time, receives no more in a week than the man 
who has steady employment at $1.00 a day. 
One works four days at $1.50 for each day, 
and the other six days at $1.00 per day. 
This spring, work was rather slack, and I em- 
ployed several men at $1.00 a day. As they 
board themselves, I thought this cheap, and 
made a point to furnish them steady work. 
Last Saturday night they told me that they could 
work no longer at this price, that every one else 
was paying $1.25. I agreed to pay it. On 
Monday it commenced to rain, and at noon they 
asked me what they should do. I told them they 
could keep on spreading manure. " But it. rains 
too hard." "I am sorry for it," I replied, "but 
I cannot help it ; I have no in-door work I can 
afford to do at $1.05 a day." The consequence 
was, they had to go home. They lost another 
day during the week. And the result is that to- 
night, (Saturday, April 27.), instead of paying 
them $6.00, 1 only paid them $5.81. They got 
less money, and I lose a day and three quarters 
work. I had plenty to do, and this loss of time 
is an injury to me, and no advantage to them. 
There is so much work to be done in this coun- 
try, and so few, comparatively, to do it, that we 
can, as a community, ill afford to waste time. But 
as long as farmers continue to pay such high 
rates for occasional day-work, the men dislike 
to engage by the month at fair wages. I am 
satisfied that this is one of the greatest evils of 
our present American system of farming. 
I have lost another horse. He was old and 
not very valuable, and had he seen fit to have 
departed last fall, I should not have regretted it 
so very much. But having given him plenty of 
hay and grain all winter, and not demanded 
much labor in return, it is very unkind in him 
to give me the slip just as the busy season is 
coming on. Yesterday he was plowing in a 
three horse team, and was apparently well when 
he came home. The man watered him before 
putting him in the stall, (a bad practice), and in 
half an hour he was taken with violent pains, 
and only lived till 3 o'clock in the morning. I 
am having him skinned and opened, to see if we 
can ascertain what was the trouble. I acted ou 
the supposition that it was a severe attack of 
spasmodic colic, and gave him injections of 
warm water and soap, with a dose of laudanum 
and ether, two table-spoonfuls each, in a pint of 
water. I repeated every two hours, with an 
ounce of ether in the interim. I find this al- 
most invariably a cure for colic. It seemed 
to relieve " Old Dick," but did not cure him. 
Abortion in Cows. 
In inquiring into the causes of this scourge, 
for such it really is, in some sections of the coun- 
try, it is very important to take note of such 
considerations as are presented herewith by our 
correspondent, as well as to consider that there 
is such strong nervous sympathy among cows, 
(though, perhaps, it is a peculiar influence, due 
to odor or something of that kind), that when 
one cow in a herd "slinks" her calf, one or 
two others are very apt to do the same. This 
subject is attracting the attention of distinguish- 
ed physiologists, aud of our State Agricultural 
Societies and Boards of Agriculture, so that 
we hope some light may be thrown upon the 
hidden cause, or causes, of so much trouble. 
We would be very glad of facts which will help 
to a better knowledge. "M. A. O," in the arti- 
cle which follows, though " only a woman," as 
she says, writes forcible common sense in a way 
to surprise those, if an}' there be, who hold 
woman in as light esteem as some of them seem 
to hold themselves. 
" I sec you say that Abortion in cows, aud 
Hog-cholera are on the increase. I am ' only a 
wonuxn,'' and as a matter of course, women are 
not entitled to much consideration, but I have 
been living on a farm from childhood, and have 
seen more or less of the diseases common to 
the cow family. My father farmed for thirty 
years, and kept from eight to twenty cows. All 
that time, he superintended his affairs himself, 
and but two cows and one steer died in all those 
years. One cow and a steer died from the effects 
of eating too much clover. In the last twenty 
years, since I have been large enough to know 
anything about a cow, wc have had but two 
cows slink their calves, and these catastrophes 
were both caused by the unruly horn of a ma- 
licious cow belonging to the herd; they were 
both young cows, ami neither of them were ever 
unfortunate again, although retained until they 
were old cows, and I think if those gentlemen 
who have so much trouble with their cows, will 
keep a sharp look out, they will find, as I have, 
that a heavy boot or brogan on the foot of some 
ill-tempered hireling, or the horn of some un- 
ruly member of the herd 'planted' in the side 
of their cows, is the cause of a great amount of 
the disappointments and trouble they experience. 
Of course I would not say that such is the cause 
in all cases, but it is iu a great many. One of 
my neighbors was all the time complaining of 
his cows in the same way, and could not imag- 
ine what was the matter. I happened to pass 
his stable one day, and saw a German he had 
hired, kick a cow unmercifully, for no reason but 
that she was afraid him, and when he came iuto 
the stable she jumped around and set her foot on 
his toes. As a matter of course that was not the 
first kicking she had received. All the cows in 
the stable were in a continuous uproar, when 
this man was about. I thought I had found the 
secret of at least one stable besides my own." 
New Manner of Dissolving Bones for 
Farming Purposes. 
a 
We have received the following translation of 
an article by Prof. Ilieukoff, Moscow, Russia, 
from a friend in Washington. The process is 
not altogether new, but as the success of such 
operations depends often upon minute details, 
we are glad to publish it. Prof. I. says: "It 
was a matter of importance with me to discov- 
er a method by means of which every farmer 
might be enabled to prepare bones for his 
meadows and fields. As great masses of salts 
are accumulating in the ashes of every house- 
hold, and most of them with those burning wood, 
I used alkalies in connection with unslak- 
ed lime, which soon dissolveel the bones. To 
my friend and pupil, Mr. Alex. Engelhart, to 
whom I communicated my discovery, belongs 
the honor of having introduced a new and 
convenient process for gaining manure for agri- 
cultural use. I give it in an extract : 
1 Suppose you have 4,000 pounds of bones, 
you need 4,000 pounds of aslies, (averaging 10 
per cent, of carbonate of potash), GOO pounds of 
unslaked lime, and some 4,500 lbs. (551 gallons) 
of water. Dig a hole some two feet deep, large 
enough to receive the bones and one half their 
volume besides; parallel to this, you tlig anoth- 
er one, 25 percent, larger, both being filled with 
bones. First, slake the lime and mix with your 
ashes, covering 2,000 pounds of the bones in 
the smaller one. Then it is filled with water, 
and left. When it gets dry, add, continually, 
water enough to keep it wet. When the bones 
crumble iu your fingers, then take the whole 
mass out, and spread it over those bones in the 
second hole, leaving the decomposition to go 
on. When tins is done, let the mass dry; and 
to make it li; for use, add peat powder or nnilow 
garden soil until it is well dried and powdery. 
Let it be shoveled over several limes, ami then 
apply to your fields. 
' Thus you get.a fertilizer averaging 12 per 
cent, of phosphate of lime; 2 per cent, of alka- 
lies, and G per cent, of nitrogen.' " 
[The pits used in this process must of courso 
lie dug in soil, to a great degree impervious to 
water. Clayey soil will answer, if first sprinkled 
and then pounded, or clay may be " puddled" 
in a basin in any soil, ami a water-tight pit bo 
made. If the bones are tolerably fresh, there 
will be very little loss of ammonia. Wc havo 
known the softening of the bones to be com- 
plete ou a small scale.— Ed.] 
