-42 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[February, 
Contents for February, 1878. 
Calendar for February. 
Among the Farmers, No. 25.—Root Crops, Best Varieties ; 
Corn Fodder; Hay Knives. 51 
Bee Notes for February. 50 
Boys and Girls’ Columns—Young MicroscopistsClub ; 
What to Look At; Amusing Things: The Ground 
Pine—Aunt Sue’s Chats ; Puzzle Box: Chimneys and 
Chimney Sweepers.15 Illustrations.. 66-68 
Cattle—Hereford Breed. 59 
Cattle—Value of Pedigree and Non-Recorded Jerseys. 5G 
Cheese Factory—Exterior. Illustrated.. 41 
Cheese Factory—Process of Manufacture. .4 111.. GO 
Cheese Factory—Receiving and Curing Rooms.3 111.. 53 
Crossing of Lilies. . G3 
Farm Work for February. 42 
Flower Garden and Lawn in February. 45 
Fruit Garden in February. 44 
Greenhouse and Window Plants in February. 45 
Hints and Helps for Farmers—Feed Trough for Pigs; 
Troughs for Poultry; Farm Gate; Brace for Sled 
Tongue...8 Illustrations.. 57 
House—A Country House Costing $550 to $700..3 111.. 52 
Household Department—Light in the Dwelling; A 
Library Lamp.—Home Topics—Putting Children to 
Bed; Cheap Living; Vegetables; Bread; Beef 
Smothered Down ; Soup Bones; Wood Box.4 111. .G1-G5 
Interior Fences, Not Needed. 5S 
Kitchen Garden in February. 44 
Market Reports... 45 
New York Live Stock Market for 1877 . 50 
Orchard and Nursery in February. . 43 
Pampas Grass.. G3 
Plants—Fern-leaved Trumpet Flower_ Illustrated.. 62 
Plants—Macowan’s Flame-Flower.... 111.. Cl 
Plants—New Coleus, C. Multicolor. Illustrated.. G1 
Poultry—Hatching Coop for Winter. Illustrated.. 59 
Poultry—Rustic Poultry Houses.2 111. .56-57 
Requisites for an Ice-House. 51 
Saw Mill—Plan of.2 111.. 50 
Science Applied to Farming, No. 38.—Reports of 
Experiments with Fertilizers.50-51 
Talks on Farm Crops, No. 12.—Potatoes, Early and 
Late Varieties; Soil and Manure for, Size of Seed.. 55 
Tree Scraping and Tree Scrapers .3 111. .51-52 
Utility of Dairy Exhibitions. 51 
Value of Crooked Timber . . 8 HI .57-58 
Vegetables—A Double Crop; Lettuce and Cauliflower. 
2 Illustrations . 63 
Vegetables—Experience with in 1877. Illustrated.. 62 
Village Improvement Association. 59 
Wagons—Bolster Spring for.2 Illustrations. 59 
Wheels Made by Machinery.5 Illustrations.. 56 
INDEX TO “BASKET.” OK SHORTER ARTICLES. 
About the Microscope_47 Leaky Cow.49 
Absorbent for Manure_48 Lice on Hogs.49 
Air under Skin.75 Live Stock in Iowa 
Apple Saas.75 L. I. Lands 
.46 
.75 
Asbestos Paints.48 Malt Combs.47 
Atlantic Monthly.73 Manure Question.49 
Attar of Roses.75;Maple Sugar.48 
Baling Manure.74 Mixed Food.49 
Black Board in S. S.75 
Bommer's Manure.48 
Book for Shepherds.49 
Catalogues.48 
Chemicals for Compost.. .75 
Chinese Primroses.48 
City Manure.74 
Cooking Feed .75 
Corn and Flour Cake.46 
Muck Compost.73 
Nebraska Land.48 
Nuts and Nubbins.75 
Packing Eggs. 74 
Patent Laws^Amended_74 
Peanut Oil.49 
Planting Beans.49 
Poland Chinas in Eng¬ 
land .49 
Corn Fodder. 49,Potatoes for Pigs.49 
Currants and Raisins.... 74 Profitable Hen.75 
Cutting Sprouts.49 Provide Seeds Now .46 
Destroying Dewberry.74 
Devon Cattle.46 
Eggs and Fowls. .74 
Essay on Diseases of 
Swine... . .74 
Export of Farm Products 46 
Farm Apprentices. 75 
Farmers Clubs.74 
Fat Heifer..49 Special Fertilizers 
Flea Enlarged.46;Stable for Sheep 
Querist.48 
Renting Farms.74 
St. Nicholas .74 
Settlement in Minnesota.47 
Shorthorn and Highland 
Cross. .47 
Shorthorn Convention... .74 
Sore feet on Cows.46 
48 
73 
Florida Fair.48 Steam Plows. 
Game Birds and Water Strawberry Fertilizer.73 
Fowl..48 Sundry Humbugs.47 
Gardeners' Monthly.74 Superphosphate, Ineffec- 
Good Eyes.74j tive.75 
Grain Drills.75,Tonic for Pigs.49 
71 Travis’ Wheat Hoe.47 
Grass for Wet Lands. ... 74 
Hay in Pits.49 
Heavy Duroc Pigs .49 
Herding Cattle.74 
Hessian Fly.47 
House for 200 Fowls.47 
Hydraulic Ram.75 
Improved Plows 111 .74 
Turnips .48 
Using Bones.74 
Value of Fertilizer.75 
Veterinary schools needed 46 
Vick—Stop.73 
Water Ga e.73 
Wheats, New.48 
All About, California.— Those of our 
readers who desire reliable information in regard to the 
Pacific Coast, should get the “ S. F. Weekly Bulletin,” 
advertised in our columns. Its reputation is first-class 
in all respects. It is a good literary and family paper, as 
well as a faithful exponent of Pacific Coast facts. Mr. .T. 
W. Simonton, the well known Agent of the Associated 
Press, is one of the principal owners of the “Bulletin.” 
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AMERICAN AG RIC II LT V R 1ST. 
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY, 1878. 
“The oldest inhabitant” does not remember a 
winter that began so favorably as the present one. 
To plow on the last day of the year, with the 
weather like that of May, while the cows are pas¬ 
turing on the meadows, is, for the Eastern and 
Northern States, something remarkable. Fortu¬ 
nately, there has been little harm done by the ext ra¬ 
ordinary mildness of the early winter ; and much of 
the spring work has been put in a very forward 
state. This is a great help ; a farmer, unless lie can 
be ahead of his work, must labor under many dis¬ 
advantages. Of all men, the farmer most lives for 
and works for the future. He plows and sows, 
months before he reaps. Ilis young stock always 
appear to him as the future matured animals, and 
it is of these that he thinks, and not the young 
creature which he feeds and nurses. He must plan 
for years ahead; when he breaks up a sod he has in 
his mind’s eye the field again in grass five or six 
years hence, and the work of all those years is to 
insure a good meadow then. No man needs to be 
more patient than he, nor to wait more cheerfully 
for good or ill, he knows not which, that may befall 
him. And now that winter seems hardly to have 
begun, we are already anxious about the spring, 
which will beat hand in a month, and planning what 
shall be done about this or that. The management of 
properly regulated farms should he planned,once for 
all. There should be no changes, except those regu¬ 
larly recurring which arrive year by year, and which 
follow one another as orderly as the changes of the 
seasons. The great fault of American farming is 
this constant desire for change. We change our 
farms as we would change the fashion of our coats. 
We rarely think of them as homes which our chil¬ 
dren shall occupy after us. It is the same with our 
stock, crops, and manner of farming. As the fashion 
comes up, or any new thing or idea is talked about, 
we cast aside, or leave the old, and take up the new. 
We do not take time to learn the value of what we 
have, or that there is good in every thing, if we 
only persevere and bring it out. We take up dairy¬ 
ing, for instance, trying all the popular breeds of 
cows, and leave that to take up hops, tobacco, or 
fruits. Then we go to grain-growing, and finally 
begin to think the West, or the South, or orange¬ 
growing in Florida, is more desirable, and try to 
sell out; in the meantime we give no heart to our 
business, and that necessarily languishes. There 
are many exceptions, but this is the rule. We hear 
it talked over wherever farmers gather, and read of 
it in reports of farmers’ clubs, and conventions. 
This is unprofitable. The farmer should be con¬ 
servative, steady, patient, persevering, and con¬ 
tented, if he would be a successful and happy man. 
While the whole world depends upon him for food 
and clothing, he can never fail to have profitable 
employment, or find a market for bis crops. The 
best farmers are those who discover what their 
farms are best fitted for, what they can do the best, 
and persevere iu that—year by year becoming more 
proficient, more experienced, and more successful. 
Mints for Work. 
Seeds of All Kinds should be procured at once. 
Seed dealers are overrun with orders just when 
farmers want the seed to sow, and the chances are, 
that these wants can not all be supplied at a day’s 
notice. Those who buy seed at home, sometimes 
have to leave their work in the field and hunt up 
seed from their neighbors, who, having sold the 
best, have only the refuse left. Prices are always 
higher just at sowing time. The man who must 
have an article, is in the power of the seller. 
Procure Good Seed. —Fresh plump seed, free from 
seeds of weeds, should be procured, even if it costs 
much more than old and foul seed. There is no 
economy in buying poor seed, but a great loss; and 
care in selection will be well repaid. 
Feeding Stock is the most important labor of the 
winter season, and intimately related to this is 
Making Manure , which is, or should be, carefully 
considered in feeding stock, and where the quality 
of the manure-heap is carefully looked after, the 
stock will always be well and profitably fed. 
Rich Manure can only he made from rich food. 
Animals add nothing to the manure. If we feed 
straw, we get back as manure something less than 
the straw we feed, and straw alone is very poor- 
manure. If we feed oil cake meal, corn meal, bran, 
and similar rich food, to mature animals, they con¬ 
sume the starchy and fatty portions, while much of 
the nitrogen and phosphates go into the manure 
heap along with the straw or hay eaten, which give 
the needed bulk to the manure. The more nitrogen 
; the food contains, the richer will he the manure. It 
is thus that the statement made by chemists,that the 
manure made by feeding a ton of bran, or linseed, 
or cotton seed oil cake, is for some soils worth more 
than the food itself, can be satisfactorily explained. 
Oil dake is the refuse of the manufacture of lin¬ 
seed and cottou seed oil. Many thousands of tons 
of it are made in this country yearly, but it is almost 
all exported to England, where the farmers feed it 
to fattening animals for the sake of the manure. 
The use of this rich food is to be highly recom¬ 
mended, and were it properly understood and ap¬ 
preciated, not a ton of it would leave this country. 
Bran and Middlings may be fed to all kinds of 
stock. All, from horses to poultry, eat these eager¬ 
ly, and thrive upon them. 
Corn Stalks and Straw should be cut up with a 
fodder cutter if only to be thrown into the yard, or 
used for litter. Short stalks absorb more liquid 
than long ; the manure from them is easier handled, 
and they rot more quickly. A fodder cutter run by 
a two-horse tread power, will cut 100 pounds of 
straw, or stalks, in five minutes, and the cost of the 
machine and often labor will he repaid in one season 
in tlie convenience of handling the short manure. 
The Manure Aap may he made in a central place 
in the yard, and the different kinds of manure 
should be wheeled out of the stables and pen6, 
and mixed together in the heap. We find it pays 
to turn over the heap once or twice during the win¬ 
ter, mix it thoroughly, and break up all the lumps. 
This makes it fine, and fit for use early in spring. 
Manure is Wasted by exposure to washing rains, 
or by being trampled by stock in wet yards. It may 
easily lose three-fourths of its value in this way. 
Manure that has been Brawn Out during the fine 
fall weather should be evenly spread, and not left 
in heaps, otherwise the places covered are too rich, 
