SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
113 
CONDENSED CORRESPONDENCE. 
The Vine in North Alabama. — Mr. C. W. Strong, of 
Meridianville, Madison county, Ala., writes us that he 
has been engaged in Vine Culture for the last six years ; 
that, in 1856, he made 325 gallons of wine ; failed in 1857 
on account of frost and a hail storm ; in 1858, made 210 
gallons of wine, all Catawba, Isabella and Herbemont’s 
Madeira, and will have in 1860 five acres in full bearing, 
&c. 
Howto Kill Sassafras. — We have published various 
methods of destroying the Sassafras, heretofore, but the 
following inquiry may elicit something new : 
Editors Southern Cultivator — We are greatly 
troubled in this part of the country with Sassafras sprouts 
that spring up in multitudes in our fields a few years after 
they are cleared and brought into cultivation. These 
sprouts, owing to their incalculable number, give us great 
annoyance in our corn, wheat and oat crops. The object 
of this communication is to ask some of your numerous 
correspondents to inform us through the medium of the 
Cultivator how we are to prevent the growth of the Sas- 
safras in our fields, or how to exterminate it when grown. 
An answer to this will much oblige, 
Yours truly, Joseph McKee. 
Juno, Dawson, Co., Ga., 1859. 
Hog Cholera and Black Tongue. — Can you or your 
numerous correspondents give me a certain, safe cure for 
Hog Cholera; also, Murrain, Distemper or Black Tongue 
in cattle 1 C. T. B. 
Corns on the Foot of a Horse. — Will you, or some of 
your numerous readers, inform me how to cure corns on 
the fore-feet of a horse I I have one so afflicted with 
them as to be scarcely able to get out of a walk. 
R. J. R. 
Awful! — The terrible results of a failure of the Culti- 
vator to rtdich. its deslinaiioxx, are but faintly shadowed 
forth in the following “burst” from a Mississippi corres- 
pondent : 
“Why, if the Cultivator were to stop coming here (where 
every number, I suppose, from the first of the first volume 
to the last of the last has come,) we would all get entirely 
out of gear. “Buck” would not havj, nor “Brandy” gee ; 
the mules would cease to bray ; the horses become slug- 
gards; the colts would stop growing and the mares foal- 
ing, the sows to grunt and the pigs to squeak 1 The 
fences would fall down and the gates fly open ; the hens 
would cease to cackle and the Shanghai ‘ roosters” to crow 
(so loud), the bees to buzz, the birds to sing, the corn to 
grow, the cotton to open, the fruit to bud, ilie flower to 
bloom; “the nightingale would pine, the roses fade,” and 
everything else you can imagine would happen, in ad- 
dition to my imaginings.” 
GEORGIA WINE, IN OHIO. 
The interesting and suggestive letter of our friend, R. 
Bcchanan, Esq , of Cincinnati, ought to remove any 
lingering doubts that may still be entertained by our peo- 
ple, respecting the capacity of the South for the easy and 
profitable production of Grapes and Wine; and will, we 
doubt not, give a new impetus to Vine Culture among us. 
If we divide by 4 the one thousand (1000) gallon esti- 
mate of Mr. Buchanan’s Georgia correspondent, we still 
have 250 gallons of wine per acre ; wfflich, at the low price 
of SI per gallon, gives us S250 — a return far better than 
we can expect from cotton, corn, rice, wheat, tobacco, or 
any other staple crop. It may be urged that, with a large 
increase in produce, the price of Wine must, necessarily, 
fall, and that the present rates cannot long be sustained; 
but the history of the past proves that the demand for 
nearly all the necessaries and luxuries of life more than 
keeps pace with the supply, and that most of our agricul- 
tural and horticultural productions command a higher 
price now than they did ten years ago. It will require a 
century, yet, to supply our vast and constantly in- 
creasing population with good and cheap wines in 
abundance, and to drive out of use the immense quantity 
of adulterated trash which we import from abroad, and 
the vile alcoholic mixtures that we make at home. 
By reference to the article on Champagne Wine, in 
present number, it will be seen that America alone imports 
from France and consumes about six and a half million 
bottles of Chaynpagne ipex yeniX I to say nothing 
of the hundreds of thousands of barrels and hogsheads of 
stuff called “Madeira,” “Claret,” “Sherry,” “Port,” &c., 
&c.; the importation of which from other foreign" coun- 
tries, costs us additional millions of dollars annually. 
With our vast extent of country suitable to the Vine, 
and our abundance of cheap lands, we ought not only to 
supply our own wants, but those of the “rest of mankind,” 
and we can do it, if we will try. Let us, then, push for- 
ward the production oipure and chea.p native American 
Wines ; drive all poisonous and unwholesome foreign mix- 
tures from the market; suppress, in a great measure, the 
tippling of maddening alcoholic drinks, and keep our un- 
told millions of money at home, for the benefit our own 
people. 
There is no work of patriotism or philanthropy in 
which a portion of our land owners can engage more com- 
mendably than this; and few enterprises that hold out as 
strong and sure pecuniary inducements. 
OUR BOOK TABLE. 
Transactions of the New York State Agricultural 
Society, for 1857. 
B, P. Johnson, Esq , the accomplished Secretary of the 
New York State Agricultural Society, has given us an op- 
portunity to read the seventeenth volume of the Transac- 
tions of an institution which deserves sometlung more 
than a passing notice. In the volume before us, of over 
800 pages, there is one of the best addresses ever written 
or spoken by Mr. Edward Everett, whether viewed in 
reference to its classical purity of style and language, or 
the happy choice of themes adapted to the occasion of an 
aniversary festival of American farmers. Prof. Wilson of 
the Edinburgh University ; Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert, 
of England, the largest experimenters in agriculture the 
world has ever produced ; Prof Brewer, of the Agricul- 
tural College of New York ; Dr. Fitch, Entomologist to 
the Society; Peter Love, of England, on the Mechani- 
cal mode of Deepening Soils ; Sanford Howard on Dairy 
Stock ; not to name other able contributors, furnish in- 
structive papers in the work under consideration. So 
much new matter, and much of it from practical farmers 
connected with the well organized county societies in 
