SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
89 
To Make Young Pear Trees Ghow. — I was afflicted 
by the sight, in my garden, for fflur or five years, of the 
most luxuriant and thrifty young pear trees, which would 
not bear, but all their strength ran to wood. Vexed at 
this, I resolved to try the effect of bending down the 
branches so as to cheek the flow of the sap, and cause 
them to form fruit buds instead wood of buds. According- 
ly, the first week in December, I filled my pockets with 
Stout twine ; I drove down some small pegs into the 
ground beneath my trees (which had branched low, so as 
to make dwarfish heads ;) I then tied a string to the end 
of every shoot, and gradually bringing down the end of 
the limb till it curved down so as to make a considerable 
bend or bow, I fastened it in that, either by tying the 
Other end of the string to the peg, or to another branch, 
(Sr a part of the trunk. 
According to my expectation, the tree next year chang- 
ed its habits of growth, and set an abundance of fruit buds. 
Since that I have had plentiful crops of fruit without 
trouble. Take good care not to let many branches grow 
on the upright system. — Horticulturist. 
Fermentation. — A thorough exclusion of the air from 
fermenting liquids is all-important. Professor Shephard 
here describes a most excellent way to accomplish this 
desirable object. 
Blessrs. Editors: — An important secret in fermentation 
of wine so as to retain a large amount of saccharine mat- 
ter after fermentation, may be of service to the readers of 
the Homestead. The same process is equally beneficial in 
making cider. It is as follows : 
Fill your cask with new wine or new cider, and bung 
it up tight. Then bore a hole in the centre of the bung, 
and fix in a tube, which must be bent over like a syphon 
with the long arm or end dipping into a vessel of water. 
The result is, that fermentation will go on, and the car- 
bonic acid gas be forced through the tube, and escape 
under the water, while the oxygen of the air cannot re- 
turn to enter the cask to make the wine or cider sour. 
This is, in short, the way to obtain the pure juice of the 
grape. Forrest Shephard. 
\in Homestead. 
CHEAP STU3IP PUEEEK. 
A very good stump puller may be made by any farm.er 
who has an axe, a stick of timber, and a chain. 
You have only to save one white oak stick in your 
clearing, 15 or 20 feet long. This is your lever power. 
You need not raise it to a a perpendicular, nor lift it 
about by main strength. Hitch a good pair of oxen to 
the top end and make them drag it along side of the 
stump to be pulled — drag it till the butt end comes even 
with the stump. 
Now, with a couple of iron bars, two men will cant 
this butt end against the fast stump— make the lever fast 
to the stump with a timber chain, giving it the right twist. 
Thus your machine is attached to the stump, and you 
have only to drive your oxen at an angle to give it the 
right twist. 
Large stumps are drawn out by this simple method, and 
should your stump prove too large for your team, you 
have only t6 dig around and cut off some of the principal 
fangs — as all are obliged to do when they use patent ma- 
chines. 
Two yoke of oxen may be hitched to such a lever when 
the stumps are large, and with one or two yoke the lever 
is readily dragged from stump to stump without unfasten- 
ing the drag chain on the top end. The attendance of 
two men is required, but there is not one-fourth part so 
much lifting and hand labor as when n complicated ma- 
ckine is us^. 
This white oak lever moves in a horizontal line and 
twists the stump off instead of raising it up into the air, a 
great advantage over the tipping operation, which leaves 
the stump on edge. 
When the stumps are not large, one yoke of oxen and 
two men will accomplish as much in a day as any ma- 
chine can do with two men to tend it. In fact, we have 
seen four men in attendance on a patent machine pullet;, 
and their labor was not so light as it is on a simple 
lever, drawn from stump to stump by oxen. — Mame 
Farmer. 
HUNGARIAN GRASS. 
Believing a brief account of this grass and its merits 
may not be amiss, and knowing that the circulating medi- 
um of the “newspaper” extends through all the States of 
our Union, I will, for thh benefit and interest of our farm- 
ing community East and West, North and South, endeavor 
to say something relative to its introduction in America^ 
of its productiveness, and also of its use, but feel certain 
I shall not be able to speak of its merits as it deserves. 
Its introduction in the United States w’as, as near as I can 
learn, in 1853, by a native of Hungary. A gentleman, 
then residing in the State of Illinois, procured a small 
handful of the seed from the Hungarian exile and took it 
to Iowa, and sowed it first on the prairies of the great 
West. The demand increasing, the little handful has 
fallen far short of supplying the cry for more seed. As 
yet its cultivation is chiefly limited to but two or three 
counties in Iowa, but such is the demand for it that its 
seed sells at unusual high rates. Its productiveness, both 
for hay and seed is such that it is supplanting oats and 
timothy, and even the numberless acres of corn are wan- 
ing before it and giving it place. From three to four tons 
of hay and from twenty-five to thirty bushels of seed is 
an average crop per acre, yet it has frequently been known 
to produce, at one cutting, six tons of hay and forty 
bushels of seed per acre. Drouth does not appear to ef- 
fect its growth, its long roots strikingdeep into the earth, 
draw up the substance from a depth that cur common 
grasses, owing to their short roots, cannot reach, which 
enables it to withstand the hot, dry blasts of midsummer 
when other grasses fail. Horses and stock of all kinds 
give the hay made from this grass the preference over all 
others. A horse fed on it with the seed left on, requires 
no other grain through the winter; cattle and cows fat- 
ten on it; and as a food for young poultry, it cannot be 
surpasssed, as the seed seems to be suited precisely in 
quality and size to their wants. I have, as I said, given 
a very brief account of its merits, but hope some one more 
competent than your humble servant will give it more 
fully. I would further say, from what I know of it, that 
all that can procure even but a small portion of the seed 
and sow it, will be well repaid by its proceeds for the 
present year’s subscription to your useful “newspaper.” 
The above can be relied upon as no exaggeration, but 
falls far short doing the subject justice. — Ex. 
L. R. , in Valle]/ Farmer. 
McDonough Co., Illinois, 1858. 
Peat, Lime and Potatoes. — Mr. Philip O’Reilly, of 
Providence, R. I., (says the Germamtown Telegraph) 
states that lime is of no avail in preventing potato rot, afi 
he has tried it. and has seen it tried by others in vain. 
After many experiments, he has found that a handful of 
dry peat in powder or small pieces was the best preven- 
tive, and he thinks if it were generally applied, it wouW 
save ninety-nine in every hundred hills. 
