REVIEW OF THE SEPTEMBER NO. OF THE AGRICULTURIST. 
375 
morning, noon, or night. In fact, I may say of 
them what the sublime poet says of another stand¬ 
ing dish :— 
Bean porridge hot, and bean porridge cold, 
And bean porridge best at nine days old. 
Dandelion Coffee. —What! that common plant 
that grows in everybody’s door-yard ? Is it a fact ? 
Who has tried it on this continent ? Anything that 
will help to stop the enormous consumption of 
coffee in this country, I shall look upon as a great 
blessing and saving of health and life. 
The Alpaca. —This is a very interesting article, 
in which much useful information is conveyed in a 
concise form; and if passed over by the reader 
might as well be referred to again. By the by, 
what of the project for importing alpacas? Will 
it fall through for want of funds ? I shall feel 
ashamed of my country if such is the fact. It does 
not seem probable to me that the alpaca or any 
cross from them will ever be used in this country 
as beasts of burden. Although very useful in the 
mountains of Peru, where it is necessary to carry 
packages over regions entirely destitute of roads, I 
do not think they would suit this railroad region of 
o-a-head-i-tive-ness, where every man has, or may 
ave, a good carriage-road by his door. Though 
I must acknowledge that many of said roads are 
very rough ones, and show that the dwellers there¬ 
on are but a small remove above the uncivilized 
llama-drivers of Peru. 
Manure. —Will manure deteriorate if kept under 
a shed, or if well piled up out of doors ? If lime, 
gypsum, ashes, or charcoal, were mixed with the 
heap, will it “ undergo a degree of combustion and 
become dry rotten , mouldy, and useless ?” In 
using fresh, hot stable dung, I never have found any 
difficulty if plowed in deep. The best way to do it. 
when much mixed with straw, is to spread it upon 
the ground before the plow, and then let a boy 
follow with a rake and rake into each furrow the 
width of the next. 
To Prevent Smut in Wheat. —It is truly strange 
that smutty wheat should ever be grown, when it 
can so easily and certainly be prevented. The 
most expeditious way to wash a quantity of wheat 
is, to have a large trough full of brine; let the 
wheat be in a tub or basket at one end, where the 
washer can dip it up conveniently into a sieve, a 
small quantity at a time; plunge the sieve suddenly 
down into the brine, and nearly all of the smut will 
rise up and float o,yer; then empty the wheat into 
another tub of brine, and the remainder of the smut, 
if any, will float; brush away to the other end of 
the trough the floating smut, and repeat the opera¬ 
tion until your second tub or trough needs empty¬ 
ing. I don’t think it will need to stand and soak, 
and I don’t think you can grow smut from wheat so 
treated. Dry your seed as directed, with lime, 
ashes, or gypsum. 
Side-hill Plows. —Ruggles, Nourse & Mason, 
manufacture a very strong and easily worked im¬ 
plement, which needs only to be seen to be appre¬ 
ciated. There are fifty thousand of them needed at 
this moment in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, 
and Missouri, upon the soft easily washed side-hills 
of those states. 
Repeal cf the British Corn Laws —You and I, 
Mr. Editor, differ very widely in our appreciation 
of the benefit likely to be derived by American 
farmers by this act of Great Britain. As a philan¬ 
thropist, I rejoice to think that the half-starved 
English and Irish slaves may partake of some of 
the blessings enjoyed by our American slaves. 
For, among the latter, suffering, for lack of food, is 
almost an unknown thing. I most sincerely wish 
that the British starvelings could have a goodly 
share of the eatables of this country that daily go 
to waste ; or, the good, rich food that our hirelings 
turn up their noses at, and would utterly refuse to 
live upon. I do not dispute your axiom that there 
is a tendency to produce a surplus of grain in this 
country; but I do say, that it would place this 
country in a far more prosperous condition if there 
was sufficient inducement for that portion of the 
population which tends to create that surplus, to 
engage in other pursuits to an extent that there 
would be a home consumption of all the agricultural 
products of our fertile soil. If the cultivators of 
American soil are only to look to a foreign market 
for their surplus productions, it will take more mil¬ 
lions than there are in your arithmetic to compen¬ 
sate them for their loss of a home market. Again, 
all the exports of agricultural products, even should 
it (which I doubt) amount to $20,000,000 a year, 
will be returned to us in the manufactured products 
of pauper labor, such as every country should 
always make at home. While it is recollected that 
those engaged in the carrying trade are “ con¬ 
sumers,” that a goodly number of them are foreign¬ 
ers, and that a veiy much larger number of con¬ 
sumers would be engaged in carrying the surplus 
coast-wise, for the home consumption of home 
manufacturers of home-grown raw materials, into 
fabrics to export, instead of exporting the raw ma¬ 
terial and food for others to use to gain a power to 
level the agriculturists of this country down to the 
same level as the serfs of overgrown British land 
monopolizers. “ Hence the disastrous effects” can, 
and will be as “ great as apprehended by some;” 
and while “ many of our farmers will grow richer 
by the sales of their produce” to English manufac¬ 
turers, many, very many more, will grow poorer in 
consequence of the repeal of our own and British 
tariff laws. We shall see. [We think our corre¬ 
spondent has slightly misapprehended the tone of 
our article. We simply congratulated the Ameri¬ 
can people, and those of Great Britain and Ireland, 
upon the repeal'of the odious duty on corn. In 
stating the advantages of enlarging a foreign , we 
said nothing of the home market, of the importance 
of which no one has a higher estimation than our¬ 
selves; and we would do everything which we 
thought just and honorable to extend it. Do we 
understand Reviewer to assert that enlarging the 
foreign is likely to curtail the home market ? If so, 
we should be pleased to know how this is to be 
accomplished. We are of opinion that taking off 
the late duty on corn, in Great Britain, will add at 
least five cents per bushel to its average value in 
this country, for the next ten years to come. Admit¬ 
ting the product now to be 400,000,000 bushels, 
this w^ould be a gain to the country of$20,000,000 
per annum. Previous to the duty being taken off of 
cheese, in Great Britain, in 1841, we exported to 
the United Kingdom next to nothing ; and the price 
