1879.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
137 
Fig. 1.— ROOT 
CUTTING. 
of the larger roots, of a cubic inch or so, will each 
do the same. The roots being cut up, the pieces 
are to be planted in boxes of very sandy earth, or 
of ordinary loam with an equal 
bulk of sand. There is little 
danger of having the soil too 
sandy. The boxes need not 
be over three inches deep, and 
of any convenient size. The 
cuttings are to be set in these 
boxes about an inch apart each 
way, just covered with the 
soil. No light is needed until 
the leaves appear, and the 
boxes may be set one upon 
another in a warm place in the 
kitchen or any other room. If 
one has hot-beds or a propagating house, he will of 
course make use of these, but our directions are 
for those who have neither. The temperature 
should be from 60° to 70°; 
the boxes should be looked at 
daily, giving water sufficient 
to keep the soil moist, but not 
wet or muddy. When the 
buds appear above the soil, 
then these boxes must be 
placed at the kitchen windows 
or some other light, warm 
place. The buds may appear 
on the surface of the root, or 
between the bark and body of 
the root as in fig. 1, or they 
may push from the central por¬ 
tion. Figure 2 shows a cut¬ 
ting made from a piece 
of a large root, near the crown. The cuttings 
started any time this month will make plants 
ready to go out when the ground is sufficiently 
warm; they are then to be set three feet apart 
each way. The soil should be well manured, and 
the plants kept clear of weeds while young. Though 
the propagation from root cuttings is so simple, 
there will doubtless be some who are unused to 
Fig. 2.— PIECE OF 
LARGE ROOT. 
such operations and who may not care to undertake 
it, or can not give the time to details; such should 
Purchase Rooted Cutting's, 
or young plants, which are offered by some dealers. 
These plants may be set out and allowed to grow 
until they form good sized crowns; then take 
them up, cut off the leaves, and divide the clump 
into several pieces, as many as can be made, 
having a bud or crown and a root to each. This 
division may be done at any time when the ground 
is not frozen. If the plants are large enough to di¬ 
vide by midsummer, it may be done and the growth 
from the divisions made then, will be large enough 
to allow of still another division in September. 
Raising Calves with Skimmed Milk. 
A neighbor who keeps a Jersey herd raises all his 
calves on skimmed milk, and saves a much larger 
proportion of them than when he allowed the calves 
to run with the cows. His heifers are quite as 
thrifty and he thinks reach maturity as early. He 
continues the use of the milk for several weeks, 
mingling meal and shorts, until they are old enough 
to get their living on grass, when they are turned 
out for the summer. This has not been our prac¬ 
tice with Jerseys, as we wished to raise the best 
specimens of the race for their butter qualities. 
But even upon the mother’s milk we have not in¬ 
frequently lost the calves. We notice in the last 
report of our Commissioner of Agriculture an ex¬ 
periment designed to test the comparative gain of 
calves upon skimmed milk during the early and 
later part of the season. The milk was fed to ten 
calves, and the feed and the calves were weighed 
regularly. During the first week it took 11.02 
pounds of the skimmed milk to make one pound of 
flesh. There was a gradual increase of cost of pro¬ 
ducing flesh until the ninth week, when each pound 
of flesh required 17.01 pounds of milk. At this age 
they began to eat grass, and less milk was required. 
After the cream is taken from the milk, most of the 
* caseine remains, which is a good producer of muscle, 
and furnishes every thing but fat that the animal 
needs. Indian meal contains this, and other nour¬ 
ishment, and is a profitable ration to add to the 
skimmed milk. The custom of raising calves on 
skimmed milk and meal, or shorts, is on the in¬ 
crease in the dairy districts, and is found to be safe 
and profitable. Those who follow the practice are 
well satisfied with the results. Connecticut. 
A Lever Gate Latch, 
The ingenuity shown by a well educated cow in 
opening ordinary gate fastenings, calls for greater 
ingenuity in devising latches, and these are usually 
effective, until the animals learn their construction 
and make a new invention necessary. Mr. Win. E. 
Bower, Clarke Co., Ind., sends us a drawing of a 
gate lever on which there is no patent. In fig. 1, 
the device is shown in place upon the gate; the 
; latch, E, is raised by the lever, L, which works 
| upon the pivot, B. It will be seen by taking hold at 
L, and that moving the lever, either to the right or 
| left, the latch, E, will be raised; when let go, the 
I weight of the lower end of the lever and the latch 
| will bring the latch into place. Figure 2 shows the 
lower end of the lever, L ; it has a mortice in which 
the latch slides; at the lower part of this is the 
Fig. 1. LEVER GATE LATCH. Fig. 2. 
roller, B, upon which the latch rests; at C is a pin, 
placed half an inch above the upper edge of the 
latch. When the lever hangs at rest, the latch, E\ 
can only be raised half an inch, which is not suffi¬ 
cient to clear it from the catch in the gate, but by 
moving the lever the end of the latch is raised suf¬ 
ficiently to free it. This appears to be easily made 
and practical, and is sufficiently unlike other latches 
to puzzle the most expert gate-opening cow. 
A Shed for Feeding or Milking. 
A cheap and convenient open shed for feeding or 
milking, may be built as follows. Posts are set 
in the ground in four rows 10 feet apart; the posts 
in the outer rows being 10 feet apart, and 7 feet 
above the a # e 
ground, and ^ " 
those in the 
inner rows, 9 8 
being 5 feet 
apart, and 10 ® © «. @ 
feet high. 
Fig. 1 shows 
a o 
the manner 
in which 
they are 9 ® ® ® 
placed. 
These posts © 0 
are morticed 
and pinned @ 0 M 
at the top to 
plates upon 
which rafters are laid, and where necessary girts 
are spiked to the posts. A feed trough is fastened 
to each inner row of posts, and a hay rack is fixed 
above each trough ; the passage between the rows 
of posts, is used for the purpose of drawing fodder 
in a cart or wagon. The spaces between the inner 
posts, form roomy stalls for the cattle if desired, 
and if cows are kept, the posts may be placed 7 feet 
apart, and double stalls holding two cows each may 
be made. A tight roof is made overhead, and the 
gables and part of the sides and ends may be closed 
in ; or the whole may be closed in and turned into 
Fig. 1.—PLAN OF POSTS FOR SHED. 
a roomy comfortable stable. At fig. 2 is shown the 
end view of a section of the building, with the feed- 
troughs and hay-racks. By a little change, this 
Fig. 2.— END-SECTION OF SUED. 
kind of shed may be made to serve as a covered yard 
for cattle, and a receptacle for saving manure. 
Cheap Farms Hear Hew York. 
“ Can I get a small cheap farm near New York ? 
I don’t want to ‘ go West ’ at my time of life, with 
a family of daughters yet in school, but I have not 
the means to pay for a dear farm.” Such is the 
burden of many inquiries—especially since the de¬ 
pression in manufacturing and trade has turned the 
attention of multitudes to farming as a means of 
livelihood. Many hundreds of thousands have gone 
to the newer regions, but, for many, age, family, 
dependent relatives, or other causes, make a dis¬ 
tant migration undesirable if not impossible. 
Cheap and dear are relative terms. One machine 
may be dear at $50, while another, resembling it 
externally, may be cheap at $100. Land is the cul¬ 
tivator’s machine for producing crops. An acre of 
land costing $300, if near a ready and good market, 
with the collateral advantages of abundance of 
low-priced labor and fertilizers, etc., may be cheaper 
than an acre at $3, located where there is no de¬ 
mand for its products, no easy means of reaching a 
market, and no schools, churches, or good society. 
Taking all things into account, farms generally 
throughout the country are held at about their 
worth. The young and vigorous may well strike 
out into the newer regions and take advantage of 
the unexhausted native fertility of the soil, grow 
up with the country, and wait the coming of rail¬ 
roads, neighbors, schools, society, and markets. 
For others, there are lands at the East which are 
cheap, whatever their price. And there are also 
plenty of low-priced lands within 20 to 50 miles of 
New York, Philadelphia, and Boston—lands ob¬ 
tainable at $10 to $50 per acre because they have 
been subject to a slip-shod treatment that has kept 
the cultivators poor, and scared away everybody 
else. Secretary Gold, of the Conn. State Board of 
Agriculture, in recent addresses, has given some 
good advice about the idle lands in that State, 
growing brambles, brush and weeds, where they 
ought to be producing profitable crops. If the 
authorities in the older Eastern States would take 
the same measures to enlighten the public about 
the agricultural capabilities of these States, as are 
taken by some of the enterprising Western and 
Southern States, it would be of great service both 
to the people and to the Commonwealths. 
To go back to the text question above. There 
are at the gates of this Metropolitan City, in New 
Jersey, in Eastern New York, in Western Connecti¬ 
cut, and on Long Island, plenty of available cheap 
farms and low-priced lands that can be made profit¬ 
able by those who will inform themselves thor¬ 
oughly as to the best methods of treating them, 
and of applying the recent results of agricultural 
science. Take Long Island for example. Here is 
a stretch of a hundred miles lying on the shore of 
the Atlantic, whose waters furnish fish and sea 
weeds for fertilizers. The air is tempered by the 
winds coming up from the Gulf Stream. Nearly 
the whole Island might well be, and is to be, a great 
market garden for the millions living in New York 
and its near suburbs. For miles out it is already so, 
wherever speculation has not cut up the land into 
“ city lots.” A net-work of railways brings every 
part of the Island within one to three or four hours 
of the city markets. The wise and enlightened 
present management of these railroads, affords 
every facility to the cultivators, as, during the active 
seasons, freight trains stop even along side of farms 
distant from stations, to take up farm produce, and 
