14 
ORIGIN OF CHESS.—CULTURE OF COFFEE. 
breeds. What higher m eri t can be awarded them ? 
Costly likenesses of many prize Devons have been 
taken by the first cattle-painters, which are insert¬ 
ed with great truth and spirit on steel plates, in 
the London Farmers’ Magazine. The liberal and 
enterprising breeders of our country have usually 
referred the more imposing Short-Horns, which 
ave almost entirely engrossed their attention, to 
the exclusion of all others. With myself, although 
for many years a breeder, and an unwavering ad¬ 
vocate of the Short-Horns, of which I have a con¬ 
siderable herd, yet I have long been an admirer, 
aud by a close observation for many years past, am 
convinced of the positive value of the Devons in 
extensive sections and localities of the United 
States, and particularly in the light pasturage re¬ 
gions of the South. I have acquired a promising 
embryo-herd from the best materials in the coun¬ 
try, and am determined to disseminate, so far as 
lies in my power, this valuable race into those 
sections, where the Short-Horns, for any reason, 
are not preferred. Of the merits and true charac¬ 
ter of these animals, but a small portion of our 
cattle breeders are aware; only now and then an 
individual really knowing what a true Devon is. 
They are, however, rapidly growing in public fa- 
~*or, and probably but few years will elapse before 
they will become widely distributed over the land. 
L. F. Allen. 
Black Rock , Erie Co., N. Y. 
ORIGIN OF CHESS 
I see in your paper a subject under discussion, 
which has occupied a place in most agricultural 
journals in years past, viz: the origin of Chess. 
It is not new to see the subject in competent hands 
either; for gentlemen on both sides have evinced 
extensive observation, and a good degree of scien¬ 
tific research. The facts which have come under 
my own observation, are rather of a negative char¬ 
acter, and can only be classed with that kind of 
evidence called circumstantial; but this, poor as 
it is, may lead to conviction, if there is enough of 
it. 
If chess is the original of wheat, or oats, or both, 
as Mr. R. L. Allen would have us believe, or the 
offspring of either, or both, is it not a little singu¬ 
lar, that not enough of the article grows in the 
state of Maine to cause one to hear it mentioned 
once a year ? I have been a grower of wheat and 
oats for m'ore than twenty years, and never saw 
it on my farm but once. I think I might seek it 
in the whole county of Somerset without finding 
half a pint. Is it because we sow spring grain ? 
Oats is a spring grain in Wisconsin as well as 
here. Why should I never have seen or heard of 
it in oats in forty years, all which time I have 
been conversant with that crop ? I can scarcely 
believe it is for want of observation, because I have 
been closely investigating a popular error, or what 
I think such, if this be not one, viz: the change 
of barley to oats. The belief in this metamorpho¬ 
sis, is about as prevalent in the east , as the other 
is said to be in the west. Still it is easier to talk 
about it, and tell what our friends say about it, 
than to see it. 
I have often been told, “if my barley is fed off* 
the stalks will produce oats.” For nearly every 
year of the last ten, I have had oats and barley 
adjoining my sheep-pastures, as I have been al¬ 
ternately cultivating my pastures with white and 
green crops. The lambs will every year get 
through the fence and crop some of the grain; and 
I have been on the lookout for oats on my barley- 
stocks, but have never seen them. 
“ For optics nice it needs, I ween, 
To see such things as can’t be seen.” 
But do I not see many heads of oats where the 
crop has been fed? Yes, certainly, and for the 
plain reason, that oats, when fed off at nine or ten 
inches high, tiller amazingly, and my barley will 
not, under like circumstances, head at all. I nev¬ 
er have, with all my care of sinking my barley in 
strong brine, wholly divested it of oats. Hence 
the deceptive appearance. 
A few years since we had repeated statements 
in one of our agricultural papers, of potatoes (small 
ones I presume) originating on a stem of the 
common gilliflower. Whether this potato proved 
a valuable variety, I have never learned; but 
there are several persons in a neighboring town as 
confident they saw this phenomenon, as was Cot¬ 
ton Mather, that witchcraft existed in Salem. 
I do not write to explain or deny any fact stated 
by Mr. Allen ; for I do not gather certainly, that 
he saw either of the samples stated, except the 
oats in Wisconsin, and I would put it to the in¬ 
genuous candor of that gentleman to say, if it was 
as he thinks, if it does not prove a little too much £ 
James Bates. 
Norridgwock, Me., 22d Nov., 1843. 
CULTURE OF COFFEE. 
I had almost forgotten the promise I made du¬ 
ring our pleasant intercourse at my residence last 
summer, to give for the Agriculturist a short ac¬ 
count of the cultivation of coffee and other products 
in the northern sections of South America, and 
the province, or rather state of Venezuela. At 
the time I traversed that country, I did not feel 
that deep interest in things pertaining to the cul¬ 
tivation of the soil, which would induce minute 
observation of all that related to the products of 
the country. My observations were more of a 
general nature, and were directed to the cultiva¬ 
tion of coffee, cocoa, and indigo, as subjects of in¬ 
terest to a traveller, and connected intimately with 
foreign commerce. 
The luxuriance of vegetation in those valleys, 
which lie between the various branches of that 
great range of mountains which passes through 
: the South American continent, far surpasses all 
i that we meet with in this country. The valleys 
of Caraecas and Aragua, consist of a deep, rich, 
black loam, equal in fertility to the most produc¬ 
tive portions of the Mississippi or its tributaries. 
Throughout these, and on the sides of the adjacent 
mountains, are the coffee plantations, scattered 
here and there, small cultivated spots in the im¬ 
mense tract of neglected and uncleared waste. I 
