1881.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
269 
does not like the nearer markets which he 
can reach with his own team, he can send by 
rail to the large cities. In this case he should 
study to condense his freights, and he will 
find an article on that topic in the June 
American Agriculturist, which will furnish 
food for reflection. Hay may pay a fair 
profit delivered in the local market at $20 a 
ton, when it might be a losing business to 
send it a hundred miles by rail at the same 
price. 3.—Market gardening is rapidly in¬ 
creasing among farmers, as every census 
shows, especially in the manufacturing re¬ 
gions of New England, and the older States. 
This is often coupled with the milk business, 
and families on the same route are supplied 
with milk, and vegetables and fruits from 
the same farm, and often from the same 
wagon. The location of his farm in a manu¬ 
facturing region would favor either the milk 
business or market gardening, or both to¬ 
gether. Quinces and currants, he names as 
among the existing products, and these can 
be cultivated to almost any extent without 
overstocking the market. There is a lively 
demand for them both in the large cities, and 
in the local markets. 4.—It is generally a 
safe principle to raise whatever is wanted 
for home consumption upon the farm, so far 
as climate favors. The farmer should be a 
generous consumer of his own products, 
and should study variety at his table the 
year round. The age of homespun of course 
has passed, and his clothing and bedding are 
better bought than made at home. 5.—The 
most important item of manufacture will be 
found to be home-made fertilizers, and to 
this end stock must be kept, and comfortably 
sheltered six months in the year. A good 
barn and barn-cellar are indispensable to the 
most profitable manufacture of manure. The 
farm is a machine for making manure, and 
making money, which is about the same 
thing. One great drawback to the tobacco 
crop is that it robs all the rest of the farm 
for the tobacco field. He may make money 
possibly, but the machine is smashed. What 
shall it profit a man if he raise all the to¬ 
bacco in the world, and lose his farm ? 
Hookertown , Ct., \ Yours to command, 
June 1,1881. f Timothy Bunker, Esq. 
Fastening to the End Board of a Cart. 
Much delay often takes place in releasing 
and fastening of the tail-board of a cart, 
owing to the weight of the load that usually 
presses against it upon the inside. The illus¬ 
tration here given, which prevents this incon¬ 
venience very satisfactorily, is taken from 
the Journal of the Royal Agricultural So¬ 
ciety of England. A perpendicular iron 
bar or pin runs up the right side of the 
back of the cart, between the top-rail and the 
bed-rail, so as to receive, above and below, 
the two clutches of a forked lever, whose 
long thin arm, acting as a spring, reaches to 
the center of the tail-board, when, with a 
slight pressure, it is dropped into a latch fixed 
there to receive it; the tail-board is thus 
firmly secured in place. When the load is 
to be tipped, a mere touch in pressing the 
spring of the lever lifts it out of the latch, 
releasing at the same moment the two 
clutches from their hold upon the pin, and 
the tail-board comes entirely away .... The 
wear and tear of ordinary use so fatal gen¬ 
erally to contrivances, that appear the most 
ingenious, when all is fresh and new and 
oiled and painted, have no impairing effect 
whatever upon the quick release and handi¬ 
ness of this fastening.”—This will doubtless 
be welcomed by many who know the incon¬ 
venience of removing the ordinary end-board 
when under the pressure of a load. 
Maintaining the Fertility of Pastures. 
Dr. J. B. Lawes, Rothamsted, Eng., pre¬ 
sents a detailed account of his experiments 
on Permanent Pastures, in the first volume 
of the “Journal of the American Agricul¬ 
tural Association,” from which we gather the 
following: The complicated nature of pas¬ 
tures, made up, as they generally are, of a 
number of kinds of grasses, and so-called 
grasses (clover, etc.), and the difficulties in 
the way of arriving at a perfect knowledge 
of them is shown by the following illustra¬ 
tion. “A great many years ago, a very re¬ 
markable improvement of some pasture land, 
in one of our northern counties, was obtained 
by the application of a large dressing of bones. 
The land had always been employed in the 
production of cheese, for which this county 
was celebrated. This success induced others 
to use bones, and people whose land had been 
impoverished by the continual sale of hay, 
could not understand why the bones, in their 
case, produced no effect, not distinguishing 
the difference in the character of the soil, its 
exhaustion due to the sale of cheese, as com¬ 
pared with that caused by the constant re¬ 
moval of hay.” 
At the close of the detailed statement of 
the plot experiments, Dr. Lawes says : “ The 
results of these experiments make it some¬ 
what doubtful whether hay can be grown 
profitably by means of artificial manures ap¬ 
plied to permanent pastures. With us hay is 
generally grown near large towns, and the 
same conveyance which takes it to market, 
brings back the manure at little or no cost. 
Compared with the selling price, hay removes 
more of the soil constituents from the land 
than most of our other salable products. One 
hundred pounds of hay will remove nearly 
as much nitrogen, and much more mineral 
matter than 100 pounds of wheat. These 
considerations must all be studied when the 
question comes as to the profitable applica¬ 
tion of expensive manures. While, there¬ 
fore, the evidence is somewhat against the 
use of artificial manures when hay is grown 
for sale, it by no means forbids their employ¬ 
ment when grass land is used for the produc¬ 
tion of meat, milk, butter, or cheese.”. 
“ If land has been impoverished by the sale 
of hay, and hay is to be sold, dung is the 
cheapest manure to apply ; but if land so im¬ 
poverished is intended for the future to pro¬ 
duce milk, meat, or other animal products, 
potash is sure to be wanting, and the best ma¬ 
nure to apply will be either 200 lbs. of sul¬ 
phate or muriate of potash, or three times 
that quantity of kanit salts, and, in addition 
to whichever of these substances is selected, 
200 lbs. of superphosphate of lime, and from 
60 to 80 lbs. of nitrate of soda. If, however, 
the land has been impoverished merely by 
feeding stock, then the exhaustion will be 
more likely due to the absense of nitrogen 
and phosphate, and fertility must be restored 
by an application of these substances.” 
“ Quality of pasture is dependent upon the 
food in the soil; in land under grass there is 
a constant struggle going on between the va¬ 
rious plants which constitute what we call a 
pasture.”.“ Having once started a per¬ 
manent pasture by means of a judicious mix¬ 
ture of artificial manures, the question arises 
whether it is more economical to keep up the 
fertility by a fresh application of artificial 
manures, or by the manure obtained by feed¬ 
ing such stock upon the land with food grown 
in other localities ? It is not easy to decide 
this point. I am, myself, inclined to think 
that the latter process is the most economical, 
and in the conversion of arable into pasture 
land—upon which operation I have been en¬ 
gaged for the last ten years—I have trusted 
to the fertilizing properties of the manure 
from cotton-cake to enable me to accumulate 
the stock of fertility which, being exhausted 
by ages of arable culture, had to be replaced 
before the land could again become a pasture.” 
A Convenient Aid in Wiring Fence Stakes. 
Mr. Elwood C. Tantum, Monmouth Co., N. 
J., lives in a neighborhood where “worm” 
A STAKE DRAWER USED IN WIRING FENCES. 
fence is largely used, secured by vertical 
stakes which are held together by wire near 
their tops. We are indebted to Mr. Tantum 
for the sketch and description herewith given, 
of a help to bring the stakes together—or as 
he calls it, for brevity, “ A Stake Drawer.” 
The stake “Drawer,” an engraving of which 
is here presented, is used for drawing the 
upper ends of stakes close together. The 
half-moon shaped iron, a, is riveted fast to 
the top end of the lever, and is to prevent the 
end of the lever from slipping off the stake 
when in use. The second iron from the top, 
b, is 25 inches long, with two hooks at the 
end (one hook will do); this is to catch the 
stake on the opposite side of the fence. This 
iron is fastened in the lever by a bolt in a 
long mortise, in the same way as the hook in 
an ordinary cant-hook. The iron rod, c, has 
a hole in one end, and is drawn out to a point 
at the other—this is fastened to the lever by 
