18 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January 
farming pays. There are men, and many 
women, who cannot endure the imagined 
monotony—and retirement of country life. 
They must go faster, they must have more 
money, and spend more than farming will 
give them. Let such people have their way, 
and do not urge them to live away from the 
pavements. There will be farmers enough 
without them, to meet all demands for food 
and material for clothing all the non-produc¬ 
ers. There is now, ever was, and ever will 
be, the sharpest competition in farming, of 
any business whatever, and the great ques¬ 
tion with farmers, always is, will paying- 
prices be received for their products ? 
The wonderful improvement in the tools 
and machinery used on farms, and the vast 
extension of railroads to new fields, make 
the question of markets in which to sell the 
farm products much more pressing, than the 
one so often put in the past, how shall we 
keep farmer’s sons on the farms, and prevent 
their going into the cities to swell the ranks 
of competition there ? Let them go; the 
cities need their new blood, and their broth¬ 
ers whom they leave behind, will rejoice in 
their success in building up markets. 
Young men, city raised, often enquire as 
*o where they had better locate, with a view 
of spending their lives on farms. My first 
answer is, go to some good land. Do not 
accept poor land as a gift, unless it is near 
some town which will pay for perishable 
articles that will not bear long transporta¬ 
tion, but as railroads are now managed, it is 
hard to say what will not bear, what were 
but lately called long distances. Farming 
near city markets demands peculiar gifts, 
among them ability to peddle “ truck.” Let 
us return to the consideration of what has 
been done in Central and Western New York. 
The pioneers of these two regions were main¬ 
ly of the same stock; and the differences 
that can now be found between the people 
living in the northern towns of Oneida Coun¬ 
ty and the lands thereabouts, and the people 
in Livingston County, are due to the soils 
and climates there found. 
On fruitful soils in good climates, the best 
people not only remain, but leave their chil¬ 
dren. On lands in some of the northern 
parts of this State, the forests were the at¬ 
tractions to the pioneers, and the timber once 
removed, the land is too poor to enable any 
considerable population to find support. So 
it will become a great park, in which to raise 
deer and trout. Guides and health or pleas¬ 
ure seekers will be its principal population. 
If you are to be a farmer, as the word is 
now understood, go to a healthful country 
having a fruitful soil. If you. have capital, 
go where fanning is most perfectly conduct¬ 
ed. Purchase a highly improved farm, and 
let your capital put you at once into the pos¬ 
session of the fruits of the labor of those 
who made the country productive and 
healthful. If you have but little capital, go 
West, buy some land and grow up with the 
country, knowing if you make a living 
for the first ten years that reasonable wealth 
will come in due time. If you make a good 
location, buy all the land you can hold, and 
not fall into the “land poor” class. 
I am often asked, as to the most desirable 
size of a farm. This must depend on the 
size of the man who is to own and conduct 
it. The present tendency is in the direction 
of large farms. Machinery costs much, and 
will do much, and its profitable use calls for 
much land. Small farms neither justify the 
cost of machinery that does work cheaply, 
nor the emyloyment of much hired labor. 
So the sure result is, the occupant will have 
much hard work to do, with but little profit. 
The large farm gives employment to its con¬ 
ductor, in directing the work, and justifies a 
system of resident labor, performed by men 
having families living in houses on the farm, 
and boarding themselves. I once asked a 
very successful middle-aged farmer of many 
acres, as to the comparative profit of small 
and large farms, knowing that he began with 
a farm of about seventy acres, and at that 
time had about three hundred. His reply 
was that he had gone into debt for all his 
land, and had paid for it by its own produc¬ 
tions, but that his progress had been very 
slow while he had but little land, and was 
faster as he increased his debt for more acres. 
This is a man of marked success. He was 
raised on a farm. A near-by Academy gave 
the facilities for a good education, and natural 
energy and ability enabled him to create 
capital out of his business. Very few men, 
in any business, do any better than such men 
do on farms. It is true that he has his cattle, 
and horses and sheep to take care of, and his 
men to direct, but this really makes less 
trouble than the management of most kinds 
of property. 
So it comes to this—the man himself de¬ 
cides, as to the work he shall do in life, and 
while I do not deny, that ‘ ‘ time and chance 
happeneth to them all,” yet I confidently as¬ 
sert, that if to the industry, skill, and econo¬ 
my I have suggested as being necessary, 
there be added the aid of a wife in like man¬ 
ner endowed with these qualities, there is no 
manner of life so likely to insure success. 
A One-sided Snow Plow. 
lass ” or shaft, removed from the stone. A 
slot is cut in the end of the shaft, about 
four inches from 
the turning surface, 
and the portion 
bearing the crank 
is made to fit into 
it, being held in 
place by a bolt and a 
wooden pin. When 
not in use the pin 
is removed, and the 
crank falls down out of the way, as shown 
in figure 2. 
Fig. 2. —THE SHAFT TURN¬ 
ED DOWN. 
A Pig “Trap” or Holder. 
Mr. G. W. Fair, Edgar Co., Ill., sends a 
sketch and description of a device for hold¬ 
ing pigs while being rung, which he has 
found very convenient. He writes : “ The 
‘ trap ” may be placed at the end of a shute 
A TRAP FOR HOLDING PIGS. 
or passage-way, or by the side of a pen hav¬ 
ing a small door opening into the ‘ trap.’ As 
the pig attempts to pas» out at the opposite 
end of the ‘ trap,’ a lever is brought up, and 
the animal is held fast by its neck.”—The 
construction of the pig-holder, and the work¬ 
ing of the lever, are made plain by the ac¬ 
companying engraving. 
Mr. E. E. Keller, Monroe Co., N. Y., has a 
snow plow that throws the snow all to one 
side, and on this account is very handy in 
many places. One side of the plow is made 
twice as long as the other, and by properly 
adjusting the draft, only the short side faces 
A ONE-SIDED SNOW PLOW. 
the snow. A sort of mould-board is fastened 
on this side with iron straps, as shown in the 
engraving. 
A “Broken” Shaft for a Grindstone. 
Mr. James Meyer, La Salle Co., Ill., having 
experienced the inconvenience of a long 
Fig. 1. —THE JOINT SEPARATED. 
handle to a grindstone has provided himself 
with one that folds up and is out of the way 
when not in use. Figure 1 shows the “wind- 
Birds and Canker Worms.—II. 
BY PROP. S. A. FORBES. 
The species in whose stomachs no trace of 
canker worms was foimd, were the catbird, 
house wren, cliff swallow yellow-winged 
sparrow, chipping sparrow, field sparrow, 
crow blackbird, wood pewee, flicker or yel¬ 
low hammer, and quail. It is worthy of re¬ 
mark that all but two of these species (cat¬ 
bird and pewee), were represented by only one 
bird each ; and it is therefore probable that 
some of them would have been found eating 
the worms, if a greater number had been shot. 
The thrushes, blackbird, crow blackbird, and 
red-headed woodpecker, were the only ones 
found making any serious attack upon the 
predaceous beetles. The thrushes, as already 
mentioned, had eaten 12 per cent of these 
valuable insects; the bluebird, 60 per cent; 
the blackbird, 10 per cent; and the wood¬ 
pecker, 38 per cent. Taking, now, the whole 
number of birds together, as one group, we 
find that canker worms had been eaten by 60 
per cent of the species, and by about 64 per 
cent of the birds; and that they made 45 per 
cent of the food of all the birds taken in the 
orchard. 
A more detailed statement of the entire 
food of these birds may not be without inter¬ 
est : Insects, 91 per cent; mollusks, 2 per 
cent; thousand-legs, 1 per cent; spiders, 2 
per cent; wheat and seeds of grass and other 
weeds, 4 per cent. Caterpillars other than 
