1867.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
tures in which they have been fattened, and 
from whence the}' are forwarded to market. We 
came upon traces of this trade at Lafayette, In- 
diana, and made some inquiries of Col. W. J. 
Templeton, who is engaged in it, as to the mode 
of sending fat cattle to market. On an average 
he forwards about three hundred head every 
week during the year. The cattle are bought, 
generally of the large fanners, or at large mar- 
kets, and are forwarded in open slat cars by 
rail. They are well fed and watered before start- 
ing, and the first stop on the journey is at Toledo, 
where they are taken out of the cars for feeding, 
and rest for twenty-four hours. They have a sim- 
ilar stop at Buffalo, and another at Albany, 
whence they come through to New York, and 
are discharged from the cars into the cattle pens 
to be sold to the butchers. It takes about six 
days to transport a lot of cattle from Lafayette 
to New York, with the necessary rest. This is 
very important, as it brings the cattle to the 
butcher without much loss of weight and in 
good condition. The cost of transportation, by 
special contract with the railroad companies, is 
about eleven dollars a head. Without this ar- 
rangement, the cost would be sixteen dollars or 
more. If the bullocks averaged eleven hundred 
pounds each of beef, it would cost only a cent 
a pound to get them to market. This is about 
the real difference between beef in Indiana and 
in this city, and all that is paid over that goe3 
to the shipper, the butcher, and the retailer, 
each of whom makes a respectable profit. Is 
it necessary for the consumer to pay from twen- 
ty to thirty-five cents a pound for beef, to keep 
these gentlemen thriving and good-natured ? 
•-< M»W — »-• 
Raising Corn on the Prairie Sod. 
Corn is usually the first crop put into the vir- 
gin soil, whether upon the prairie or in the fresh 
clearings of the forest at the West and South. 
It prepares the way for cotton, and for wheat 
and grass as well. There is some variety in the 
methods of handling the crop, but in most cases 
it is a very simple process. The practice of 
breaking the sod in May and June, and turning 
it over in a very thin, broad slice, about three 
inches thick, is almost universal. The ranker 
the grass at the time of breaking, the better for 
the rotting process. Very strong plows are 
used to break this sod, and it requires about 
five yoke of oxen, or their equivaleut in horses 
or mules, to do it well. The shallow plowing 
is found in experience to do better than the 
deeper upon the virgin sod. The sod rots bet- 
ter, and the corn grows with luxuriance. The 
planting immediately follows the breaking. This 
is done with a variety of appliances, but upon 
the large farms always with machinery. At the 
farm of Messrs. Fowler and Earl, in Benton Co., 
Lad., it is done with a large, heavy drill, some- 
thing like Brown's Corn Planter. It plants two 
rows at a time, three feet eight inches apart, and 
eighteen inches apart in the row, three kernels 
of corn in the hill. The drill is made about six 
inches deep, with sharp steel cutters, which 
sever the sod and drop the corn, which is cov- 
ered by a roller. It takes four horses abreast to 
draw the machine and two men to manage it, 
and it will plant about twenty acres a day. This 
machine works very well, and is considered an 
improvement upon anything yet tried. It cuts 
the sod so clean that it is not much disturbed. 
The deep planting of the corn is considered a 
safeguard against drought. The vegetable mold 
is so loose above it that it is not smothered as it 
would be in older and more compact loams. 
After the planting, the ground is gone over with 
cutter harrows, and rolled with a heavy roller. 
There are no weeds upon the sod, and there is 
no cultivation. The yield is about forty bushels 
to the acre. We think if the rows were four 
feet apart, and the stalks two in a hill, there 
would be more com. Cultivation with a light 
harrow or cultivator, just to disturb the surface 
of the inverted sod, would also probably increase 
the yield. There are machines that plant two 
rows at a time, and with such regularity in the 
hills as to make rows running both ways. This 
is a great advantage in older soils, where there 
are weeds to be subdued by cultivation. Cul- 
tivation on old ground is performed with a 
great variety of implements, but almost always 
with horse-power. There are shovel-plows and 
double shovel-plows and bar-plows," culti- 
vators, and harrows, and last, but not least, the 
sulky cultivator, which goes astride the row 
with two horses, and finishes the cultivation at 
once. With this implement cultivation becomes 
a genteel business, and a lady, handy with the 
reins, might clean out her dozen acres in a day, 
with no more fatigue than in riding to market. 
Some 51. D., who is not a quack, we suspect 
will soon be recommending this as a substitute 
for the water-cure in nervous diseases. We 
know it would be good for the corn, and it might 
help a certain class of invalids just as much. 
When the corn is well glazed, it is cut near 
the roots, and shocked in bunches made up of 
sixteen hills each. Here it remains until it is 
wanted for fodder, when it is drawn out upon 
the sod, and fed to cattle, if grazing is the style 
of the farm. If pork is the chief product, the 
swine are often turned into a field of standing 
corn, and left to do their own harvesting. Of 
course, there is some waste in this process, but 
where corn costs less than 20 cents a bushel, 
the waste does not keep people awake o' nights. 
. .»-■ ■ ! ■ ►— ■ 
Specialties in Farming 1 — Hops. 
The age of Homespun is past, and the ten- 
dency of society is now very strongly in the di- 
rection of the division of labor. Men confine 
themselves more and more to the doing of one 
thing as a means of livelihood. This is more 
manifest in other callings than in that of hus- 
bandly, but it is beginning to be felt even in 
this. Fifty years ago, the farmer mainly clothed 
as well as fed his family, furnished lights and 
fuel, and did the most of his own tinkering and 
cobbling. One by one mechanics and manufac- 
turers have come to his aid, until lie has little 
else to do but till the soil. Long ago, the spin- 
ning wheel, cards and loom disappeared from 
the kitchen, and are now only looked for in the 
lumber of the garret. Tin candle moulds drove 
out candle rods and dips, and whale oil and 
petroleum banished tallow caudles. Anthracite 
has taken the place of wood at many a farmer's 
fireside, and the forest is only valued for timber. 
He no more sleds wood in winter, and his wife 
goes wool gathering among magazines and 
quarterlies rather than among Saxony and South 
Down fleeces. Instead of the general farming 
which was once almost universal in the North 
and East, we have now many specialties in hus- 
bandry, which are becoming more clearly de- 
fined. This, no doubt, has its advantage in pe- 
cuniary results, but we are not so clear about 
its influence upon manhood. The old style 
farming gave a wonderfully varied discipline to 
all the powers of body and mind. The modern 
gvmnasium could hardly put the body into 
more postures, and better discipline every mus- 
cle. It sharpened the wits, and developed the 
inventive faculties, so that the graduate of the 
farm was prepared for every emergency in life. 
He was not likely to find any new obstacles or 
difficulties that had not been met and overcome 
in his early discipline. Possibly some substitute 
may be found for this training, but we are a 
little skeptical. However that may be, there is 
no mistaking the tendency of farm life in our 
country to a division of labor. In the vicinity 
of all our large towns and villages, there lias 
sprung up,within a few years,a distinct business, 
known as truck farming. A man buys a few 
acres, often less than ten, raises vegetables for 
the city markets, educates his family, gets a 
competence, and if the city grows fast enough, 
leaves a fortune to his heirs by the rise of his 
real estate. Nearly allied to this, and sometimes 
united with it, is fruit farming. Then there are 
whole farms devoted mainly to the production 
of some one article, as ha}', onions, hops, tobacco, 
etc. Then there is the production of milk for 
the supply of the city; cheese farming and but- 
ter farming, and both combined ; sheep farming, 
and grazing to make beef. In the grain districts, 
the chief business is the production of wheat, 
oats, and corn for sale. This style of farming, 
no doubt, simplifies the business, and generally 
pays better. There will come, however, bad 
years, and defective crops, and if the farmer 
stakes everything upon one product, he is liable 
to lose a year's labor. This is a thing which 
never happens in a varied husbandry. 
Sometimes these specialties are enormously 
profitable. We recently visited the hop farm 
of M C. Wetmore, near Rochester, who makes 
hops his main product. There are thirty 
acres in the farm, and he has this year fifteen 
acres in hops — four on poles by the old method, 
and eleven on strings, about seven feet from the 
ground. He sold last year, from fourteen acres, 
§10,000 worth of hops, and this year, judging 
from the look of the vines, the product will be 
still larger. Hops sold last year for sixty-five 
cents a pound. This article can be raised at a 
profit for ten cents a pound. He gets about 
1100 pounds to the acre in good years. He finds 
the strings very much better than the poles ; they 
cost about one-eighth as much, and make a 
yield of 200 pounds more to the acre, and save 
a good deal of labor in the picking. These 
are facts worth knowing among our hop grow- 
ing friends. A small farm, well tilled, with a 
single crop, will keep a man out of the almshouse. 
Agricultural Improvement. 
It has always been our custom to accept from 
every source suggestions bearing iu however 
slight a degree upon improvement in agricul- 
ture, and using them as best we can for the good 
of the public We get a great variety of letters, 
but rarely have we had a communication so 
sensible and suggestive as the following, from 
so humble a source. We commend it to cer- 
tain of our readers who will no doubt sympa- 
thize with our correspondent in his sentiments. 
Editors of the A mtrica n Agric ultti riat : — T hat 
you may understand me the better, and be less 
surprised at my suggestions, I must tell you at 
the outset that I am one of a troupe of perform- 
ers who have been for some years traversing 
this broad and beautiful land, seeing and being 
seen. It is our highest ambition to imitate as 
well as we can the actions of mankind, and the 
kind gentlemen who conduct us over the coun- 
trv exact no other reward. They furnish us, as 
you kuow, both ponies and dogs for horses ; they 
