THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
109 
weather should be selected tor this purpose, 
and the plants immediately and frequently wa- 
tered, until they are well rooted. Melons, 
squashes pumpkins, &c., ought to be caretully 
hoed, and kept entirely tree trom weeds; other- 
wise, they will not produce good Iru it. Melons 
and cucumbers tor pickles can be sown in the 
early part ot this month. Sow kidney-beans, 
small salad, carrots, turneps and spinach for fall 
and winter use. Celery should be planted out 
in trenches ; and some varieties ot radishes and 
peas may be sown with reasonable prospect ot 
success, if the season should prove moist. Egg 
plants, peppers and tomatoes, plant out if not 
done before. Collect all the vegetable seeds 
that have come to maturity, and dry them well 
before putling away ; also, gather herbs as they 
come into flower, and dry them in the shade, 
that the sun may not injure their flavor. Pull 
up the stalks of beans, peas, &x:., which, have 
done bearing. Water may be Irequently and 
beneficially applied, but it should always be 
done at the close of the day, otherwise the plants 
will be injured by the heat of the sun. 
Fruit Gurden and Budding may 
be performed upon pears and apples the latter 
part ot this month. Gather from the trees and 
give to the cattle or swine, all fruit that is de- 
cayed or punctured by the insect, otherwise the 
insect, which now exists as a worm in the pre- 
mature fruit, will soon be able to fly and attack 
the remainder. Also continue to cut off all the 
wood as fast as it may apjTear to be infested by 
the insect which produces a black knot. Keep 
the ground well cultivated among the trees. 
There is very little else to be done in the fruit 
garden this month, excepting it may be to con- 
sume its productions, tor which directions may 
possibly not be requisite. 
Flower Garden and Pleasure Grounds. — Bul- 
bous and tuberous roots can now be taken up, 
and tulips, hyacinths, &c., carefully putaway 
for planting in the fall. Herbaceous flowering 
plants may still be transplanted from the seed 
bed to the border, and should be taken up v/ith 
as much earth as possible about the roots. 
Hedges can also be clipped in the early part of 
this month. Walks and borders keep constant- 
ly clear ot weeds, and let a general air ot neat- 
ness pervade every part of the garden. 
Plantation. — As a general rule, give the cot- 
ton crop its last working this month ; some sea- 
sons the weeds will be too large to work with 
plows without injury even before the 10th. 
Keep the fields clean; if your intention is ei- 
ther rotation, or cotton to succeed cotton, it will 
save labor next year. 
Pay particularaltention to yourtobacco fields. 
When the plants have acquired trom 12 to 14 
good leaves, and are about knee high, begin to 
top them by nipping off the bud with the aid of 
the finger and thumb nail. Take care not to 
destroy the small leaves near the buds, for if 
the land be good and the season favorable, the 
very top leaves will, in a short time, be nearly 
as large, and ripen qui e as soon as the lower 
ones, whereby two or four more leaves may be 
saved; thus obtaining from 16 to 18 leaves in 
the place of 12 or 14. As the topping of the 
plants is essential, in order to promote growth, 
and to equalize the ripening of the leaves, this 
operation should be commenced the instanlthat 
the bud shows a disposition to go to seed; and 
should be followed immediately by removing 
the suckers as fast as they appear, which will 
now put forth at every leaf. 
The blades from the early planted corn can 
now be stripped for fodder. Let the shuck or 
husk on the ear change from the green to the 
whitish cast, then tie a handful or so to itself, 
and thrust the end of the tie between the ear 
and the stalk. Do not break down the stalks, 
dr it will require more time to strip the blades, 
ut in the end there will be a gain ; for it can 
2 got in sooner it the rain threatens, or if caught 
i a rain, it will not be injured so much. Cure 
le fodder well before stacking. Late corn 
will need plowing in this month, and peas may 
be planted amongst it as directed in May. 
The late plantings of potatoe drawings and 
the plantings of vines will require plowing, and I 
drawing up with a hoe; continue to plant out 
vines. If there is not ground enough in the po- 
tatoe patch, bed up ridges in the early corn 
fields. Two furrows will do to plant on, which 
will not materially injure the corn ; or plow up 
a choice piece of stubble ground anew. 
Millet grass must be cut when just turning, if 
for feeding, and treated in the same manner as 
stacking oats. 
If your crop will admit of it, grub up small 
growth; cut down saplings, and deaden trees 
for a calf pasture, to be sown in September or 
October with rye. Plowing will be unnecessa- 
ry, the fall of the leaves will cover the ground 
and the grain will spring up and give a fine bite 
lor the winter. Make artificial pools in your 
pastures for stock if there are no natural ones. 
Prepare a turnep patch, either old ground by 
manuring high and plowing, or a piece of new 
ground. The cotton gathering season is now' 
rapidly approaching; prepare baskets and sacks 
to pick in, all leisure time, especially all wet 
days. Top cotton the last of this month, either 
by pinching off the tender top part of the plants 
or cut off w'ith a knife. Repair buildings and 
fences about fields; rake up leaves and haul on 
the land; gather manure and house it under 
sheds or give it a coating of earth. 
If there are show'ers plant French beans; sow 
more endive; prepare the ground for transplant- 
ing cabbages that are coming on in the last of 
this month. If the w'eathe r be very dry and the 
soil unfit to w'crk, prepare drills two feet apart, 
and about eight inches deep, and pour into them 
some cow-dung w'ater. Transplant your cab- 
bages into those drills and leave them four or 
five days wnthout watering. Then repeat the 
operation with the manure wmter once more, 
and there will be no danger of the plants burn- 
ing up. Should the season be rainy this pre- 
caution will be unnecessary. Sow' more carrot 
seed and proceed as directed in June, 
From the Western Farmer and Gardener. 
Book Farming and a Portrait, 
Whenever our anti-book fanners can show 
us better crops at a less expense, better flocks, 
and better farms, and better owners on them, 
than book farmers can, we shall become con- 
verts to their doctrine. But, as. yet, w’e cannot 
see how intelligence in a farmer should injure 
his crops. Nor what difference it makes whether 
a farmer gets his ideas from a sheet of paper, 
or from a neighbor’s mouth, or from his own 
experience, so that he gets good, practical, 
sound ideas, A farmer never objects to receive 
political information from newspapers; he is 
quite willing to learn the state of the markets 
from newspapers ; and as willing to gain re- 
ligious notions from reading, and historical 
knowledge, and all sorts of information ex- 
cept that w'hich relates to his business. He 
will go over and hear another neighbor tell how' 
he prepares his land, how he selects and puts 
in his seed; how he deals with his grounds in 
the spring, in harvest, and after harvest; but if 
that neighbor should write it all down careful- 
ly and put it into a paper, it’s all poison! its 
book-farming ! 
“ Strange snch a difference there should be 
’I’u'ixt tweedledum and tweedledee.” 
If I raise a head of lettuce surpassing all that 
has been seen hereabouts, every good farmer 
that loves a salad would send for the seed, and 
ask as he took it, “How do you contrive to 
raise such monstrous heads ? you must have 
some secret about itl” But if my way were 
written down and printed, he would not touch it. 
“ Poh ! it’s bookish !” 
Those who are prejudiced against book farm- 
ing, are either good farmers, misinformed ofthe 
design ol agricultural papers, or poor farmers, 
who only treat this subjectas they do all others, 
with blundering ignorance. First, of the good 
farmers: There are in every country, many 
industrious, hard-working men, who know that 
they cannot afford to risk anything upon wild 
experiments. They have a growing family to 
support, taxes to pay; lands, perhaps, on wuich 
purchase money is due. They suppose an 
agricultural paper to be stuffed full of wild fan- 
cies, expensive experiments, big stories made 
up by men who know of no farming except 
parlor-farming. They would, doubtless, be 
surprised to learn that ninety parts in a hun- 
dred ofthe contents of agricultural papers, are 
written by practical farmers; that the editor’s 
business is not to foist absurd stones upon cre- 
dulous readers, but to sift stories, to scrutinize 
accounts, to obtain whatever has been proved 
to be fact, and reject all that is suspected to be 
mere fanciful theory. Such papers are de- 
signed to prevent imposition; to search out 
from practical men whatever they have found 
out, and to publish it for the benefit of their 
children all over the Union. 
The other class who rail at book-farming, 
ought to be excused, for they do not treat book- 
farming any worse than they do theirown farm- 
ing; indeed, not half so bad. They rate the 
paper with their tongue, but cruelly abuse their 
ground, for twelve months in the year, with both 
hands, 1 will draw the portrait ol a genuine 
anti-book farmer of this last sort, [This pic- 
ture is drawn for the West; perhaps it needs 
no great alteration, to apply as well to the SJoutn.] 
He plows three inches deep, lest he should 
turn up the that, in his estimation, lies 
below; he sows two bushels of wheat to the 
acre, and reaps ten ; so that it takes a fifth of 
his crop to seed his ground ; his corn land bears 
just what it pleases ; which is from thirty to 
thirty-five bushels, though he brags that it is 
fifty or sixty His hogs, if not remarkable for 
fattening qualities, would beat old Eclipse at a 
race; and were the man not prejudiced against 
deep plowing, his hogs would work his grounds 
better with their prodigious snouts, than he does 
W'ith his jack-knife plow'. His meadow-lands 
yield him from three-quarters to a whole ton of 
hay per acre, which is regularly spoiled in 
curing. His horses would excite the avarice 
of an anatomist in search of osteological speci- 
mens. But oh! the cow's! If held up in a 
bright dav to the sun, don’t you think they would 
be semi-transparent? But he tells us that good 
milkers are always poor! His cows get what 
Providence sends them, and very little besides, 
except in winter; then they have a half-peck of 
corn on ears a foot long, thrown to them, and 
they afford lively spectacles of animated corn 
and cob crushers. Nevermind: they yield on 
an average, three quarts of tnilk a day ! and 
that milk yields varieties of butler quite as- 
tonishing. 
His farm never grows any better: in many 
respects it gets annually worse. After ten years 
w’ork on a good soil, while his neighbors have 
grown rich, he is just where he started. And 
when at last he sells out to a Pennsylvanian 
w'ho reads the “ Farmers’ Cabinet,” or to some 
New-Yorker, with his “ Cultivator,” packed up 
carefully as if it w'ere gold, or to a Yankee, 
with his “ New-England Farmer,” he goes off 
to Missouri, thanking heaven that he’s not a 
bock- farmer! 
Effects of Crossing on thf. CoNSTiTurroN. 
— Those classes of the human race which pre- 
serve their blood free from mixture with stran- 
gers, while they have less variety in external 
appearance, and perhaps less variety in the 
scope of mental capacity, than those who cross 
and recross at pleasure, have more endurance 
in action, firmer attachments to purposes, and 
less desultory impetuosity. This is a physical 
truth. In brute animals — horses, sheep and 
cattle — the . mixture of different races is ob- 
served to enlarge the size; it diminishes the 
hardiness and the security of the physical 
health. In man the mixture of different races 
improves beauty, augments the volume ofthe 
bodily organs, and even perhaps errpands the 
sphere of intellect. It diminishes the power of 
enduring toil, and renders the habit more sus- 
ceptible to the causes of disease. — Jackson's 
Economy of Animals. 
