REVIEW OF THE JUNE NUMBER OF THE AGRICULTURIST. 
251 
REVIEW OE THE JUNE NUMBER OF THE 
AGRICULTURIST. 
Manures— The Food of Plants, is the first article, 
the sentiments of which I fully agree with. 
Yes, and besides the thousands of farmers who 
live near towns where they could obtain " food 
for plants," in exchange for food for people, 
there are a thousand other farmers, who live 
near farms where a vast amount of the same 
kind of material now goes to waste. How often 
we see the very essence of the manure pile, 
upon the few farms, which, by chance, it is 
sometimes piled, running down some gutter or 
stream, to furnish food for frogs instead of 
plants ! How often we see piles of unused, spent 
ashes, lying year after year, keeping company 
with an ancient pile of rotten chips, that are 
furnishing food for fat dungworms, instead of a 
thriving young orchard ; for which their can be 
no better manure. Spent ashes are valuable 
on account of containing phosphates, lime, mag- 
nesia, and silex, in the exact condition that the 
plants require for food. But the greatest of all 
waste, probably, about a farm, is in the temple 
of Cloacina; for there is deposited the very 
elements that formed the food of man, and 
should go again to form the food of plants, which 
in their turn, the human food would reproduce. 
Bones are wasted upon all farms, and the reason 
that I have heard given, was, " no way to grind 
them." Save your ashes, my friend, and make 
ley and boil them to pieces ; or buy a few shil- 
lings' worth of potash to do it with. I assure 
you, it will not hurt your land. Or you can reduce 
them with sulphuric acid or steam ; do not waste 
them. Remember, if you give food to your 
plants, they will give food to you. I was in 
Kentucky the other day, and on my way to Lex- 
ington, I stopped a few minutes to look at the 
farm of my old friend, Thomas Gregg, and 
while there, measured stalks of blue grass rive 
feet long. Do you think that grew upon a poor 
starved soil 1 ? Such grass as that, in some fields 
I have my eye on, as I look out in the direction 
of the blue waters, would make the owners look 
blue with fright to see such a phenomenon. 
And so would a sight of some of the Kentucky 
cattle upon those same blue-grass pastures. 
Silk Cocoons. — You say " those you wish to 
reel may be left in the hot sun a day or two, or 
a few hours in an oven, &c," clearly inferring 
that the sun would kill the chrysalides. It will 
do no such thing. You might as well try to 
kill an African negro, by exposing him to the 
sun. If placed in a tight, glass box. or room, 
the sun will kill them, and not otherwise. You 
should have told how to keep the eggs after 
they are deposited upon the paper; as they 
will hatch in a few days unless put away in a 
very cool cellar or ice house; though I have 
known them kept by laying the sheets of paper 
between the folds of a linen sheet, and wrap- 
ping that in a woolen blanket, and packing in 
the bottom or centre of a trunk of clothing. 
English and American Husbandry. — One sen- 
tence in this article speaks of the estimate of cost 
of putting in and harvesting an acre of wheat 
upon the Illinois prairies, as calculated by the 
writer in Blackwood, at seven dollars. This I 
think too high ; though I have no knowledge 
upon that subject. But I am sure the amount 
of labor bestowed upon land, generally, in pre- 
paring it for seed, is as much below the proper 
medium as it is above the mark in England. 
Your correspondent says an American farmer 
would plow the land equally well with half the 
time and team. Doubted. No doubt with a 
pair of our light, quick horses, and such a plow as 
the last one I bought at your warehouse, an 
acre would be plowed quicker, but not better 
than English plowmen generally do their work. 
Cultivation of Timber may do upon land "too 
poor for cultivation." But keeping vast tracts 
of fertile lands encumbered with timber, instead 
of bearing wheat and corn, is poor economy. 
What if you do depend upon some other country 
for rail timber, are you poorer for it? On the 
contrary, where the facilities of transportation 
are great, the land is worth more without tim- 
ber than with, everywhere, and particularly in 
Delaware. Unless the land that C. has planted 
with pines is absolutely worthless for cultiva- 
tion, it would be economy to buy coal for fuel, 
instead of growing such miserable stuff as his 
pines are for that purpose. Growing chestnut 
timber may be done to good advantage, upon a 
thousand waste corners, nooks, and gullies upon 
many farms ; but I never would plant pines 
upon a tillable soil, even if assured to live " to 
build a house from the timber." 
Wisconsin Farming. — "This and the adjoining 
counties are fast filling up," &c. What do you 
call filling up? I recollect the "Western Re- 
serve," as the north part of Ohio was then called, 
was fast filling up, thirty years ago; but it is 
not half full yet. The truth is, throughout all 
the great west, as soon as about one tenth of 
the choice locations are taken up, the cry is, 
" the country is filled up." and onward rolls the 
tide to some other " new country," until we 
have spread over an immense surface, and no 
part of it is full, nor fast filling up. 
Experiments in Agriculture. — One of the rea- 
sons why experiments, particularly failures, are 
not given to the public, is because that same 
public have such a wicked disposition to laugh 
at and ridicule every " experimenting farmer." 
If a merchant retires from business with a com- 
petency, or even an old sea captain who has 
saved a few spare sharks 3 teeth, for future use, 
is disposed to spend his money in experiments 
upon a farm, he at once becomes the butt of rid- 
icule among all who aspire to be considered 
farmers, in the neighborhood. It is a melan- 
choly truth that a large portion of those who 
depend entirely upon the soil for support, seem 
as though they hated everything and everybody 
that offer to make any innovation upon " the 
good old rule" that guided their ancestors, and 
is good enough to guide them. And as though 
the obstacles to deter experimenters from giv- 
ing their experience were not already enough, 
" Coke " must throw in a few more. He tells 
them they must make a careful analysis of the 
soil, seed, and labor, and detail everything with 
the accuracy of a chemist in his laboratory. If 
