1880.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
4-33 
tendent of “ Shockers,” with 20 to 30 men, fol¬ 
lowed the machines and put the bundles in shocks. 
In other fields similar gangs were at work, usually 
12 to 16 machines. Some of the older and less 
perfect harvesters required an expert for every five 
or six implements. The 27,000 acres of wheat 
under the management of the Dalrymples, cut this 
year, required the use of about 150 of these self¬ 
binding harvesting machines to run for an average 
of about two weeks each. Imagine then 150 ma¬ 
chines in a line of battle, some two miles in length, 
and you have an idea of harvesting by the whole¬ 
sale in Dakota. 
540,000 Bushels of Wheat. 
As from our own estimate the entire 27,000 acres 
of the Messrs. Dalrymple will this year average at 
least 20 bushels per acre, the product will be full 
half a million, or 540,000 bushels—requiring 13,500 
wagon loads of 40 bushels each to take it to the 
tailway ; and 2,16'.. T-eight cars, carrying 250 bush¬ 
els each, to transport it to the distant market. 
These wagon loads in line, 50 feet each, would ex¬ 
tend 120 miles ; and the train of cars over 12 miles 
long, if each car occupies only 30 feet of track. 
But this is only a small part of the wheat pro¬ 
duced the present year in this immediate section. 
There are hundreds of other wheat farms ranging 
all the way from forty up to thousands of acres 
each, such as the “Sharon and Amenia Farm,” 7 
miles N E. of Castleton, containing 25,000 acres, 
just starting, but having 2.000 acres in harvest; 
the “ Williams Farm ” of 3,000 acres, 2,000 now in 
wheat ; the “ Hadwin Farm,” 5 miles west of Cas¬ 
tleton, of 5,000 acres, some 2,000 in harvest. (From 
this farm 1,280 acres were recently sold, with the 
crop on for 833,000.) But. 
Men of Small Means 
need not be set back by these large figures. We 
have seen plenty of men who came with only a few 
dollars and a team, and by breaking land for 
others and doing various jobs, then taking up land 
of their own and cultivating it, have gradually put 
themselves on the road to a competence. Some 
of these who preempted the alternate sections of 
Government land 5 years ago, at first lived in “ sod 
cottages” or “ dug-outs,” are now possessors of 
farms worth 84,000 to $5,000 and upwards. There 
are now no such lands close to the railway to be 
preempted, but there are in counties north and 
south, and a little further west, where the railway 
has but recently extended. How good these lands 
are we shall know better when we see them a few 
days hence. There are some good railway lands 
still on sale at moderate prices we believe in the 
Bed River Valley and on either side of it. 
Briefs. 
On the larger farms the threshing is mainly done 
by steam power, the portable engines and threshers 
being moved from place to place within easy haul¬ 
ing distance of the shocks. Jobbers also go from 
farm to farm with steam or horse-power threshers. 
... .As soon as the main harvesting and threshing 
is over, the teams start at once plowing the stub¬ 
ble, and before winter it is all ready for spring sow¬ 
ing, which begins here about April 1st....The 
straw is generally burned to get rid of it.... In 
breaking the new prairie, “back-setting” is pre¬ 
ferred ; that is, the sod is turned about 3 inches 
•deep from May 10th to July 1st; then beginning 
with that first broken it is plowed about two inches 
deeper, turning the sod under... .Seeding is not 
done by drilling, but with the two or four-horse 
broadcast seeder... .Oats are grown mainly for the 
home teams, the yield running from 40 to 70 bush¬ 
els per acre_Corn grows fairly, but is not a cer¬ 
tain crop... .The Dalrymples estimate that it costs 
inside of 45 cents per bushel to produce wheat and 
put it upon the cars, reckoning all expenses except 
interest on cost on land, and they would contract 
to grow it for that. The average freight from here 
to New York, including storage, commission, and 
all charges, is estimated to average a trifle under 
30 cents per bushel. We can therefore calculate 
that so long as wheat will bring 90 cents to $1.00 
per bushel at the seaboard, it will pay well for pro¬ 
ducing it here... .Fields that have been plowed 
one iach deeper each year have now produced con¬ 
tinuous good crops of wheat for five successive 
years_Only spring wheat is grown here. 
Why Crops Mature Far North. 
People often wonder how it is that many crops 
grow and mature in the high latitudes, where the 
summers are of very brief duration.—The days are 
longer as we go towards the poles, until at latitude 
68° the sun does not set at all for a brief period. 
Since the sun’s light, as well as its heat, produces 
growth, the longer it is above the horizon the 
greater is the growth of plants per day. Thus, where 
the days average 21 hours of sun, there are, in 100 
days, 2,100 hours of sunshine, while there are only 
2,100 hours of sunshine in 140 days that have an aver¬ 
age of only 15 hours of sunlight. As the isothermal 
(or equal-heat) line tends northwards after we pass 
westward of the south end of Lake Michigan, it is 
easy to understand why northern Dakota, Montana, 
Idaho, and Washington Territory, should be as 
favorable for farming, so far as climate is con¬ 
cerned, as some of the Eastern States lying much 
farther to the south. 
Bismarck, Dakota Territory. 
From Fargo to this place, 194 miles, we passed 
by rail over a woodless prairie, except along the 
streams, somewhat rolling, and of various quality 
as to fertility. There are numerous incipient 
towns at the Railway Stations, including quite a 
place at Jamestown, 101 miles this side of Fargo, 
There are here and there, all along the route, farms 
opened, and opening, by settlers. At several points 
fair crops of wheat are being harvested, and by 
careful selection multitudes can choose both rail¬ 
road and government lands, that will fall little if 
any below those we have described, for wheat 
growing. Indeed the best wheat we have seen, 
taking the whole crop, is on the large Steele Farm, 
40 miles east of Bismarck. We estimated the 
yield at 24 or 25 bushels per acre, at least, for all 
the fields in sight (28 bushels is claimed). Bis¬ 
marck is a brisk growing town on the Missouri, 
already numbering 2,500 or more inhabitants, and 
promising to be an important future business 
center, as it already is on a small scale. The 
Northern Pacific Railway, which is being pushed 
through the Yellow Stone at the rate of one to two 
miles per day, is completed to a point one hundred 
miles west of Bismarck. At this point (Bismarck) 
we take steamer up the Missouri to visit some of 
the Indian Agencies at Fort Peck, etc. O. J. 
Science Applied to Farming—LXI. 
Our experimenters of last year gave us some inter¬ 
esting facts bearing upon the effects of different 
fertilizing materials upon the quality of the crops. 
From the full details published in the pamphlet re¬ 
ports I select the following: 
“ A number reported the amounts of ‘good ’ and 
‘poor’ com; but fourteen, however, had made 
thoroughly accurate weighings The percentage 
of ‘ good ’ corn were as below : 
Number of Pounds of •' Goon '• Corn in 100 Pounds of 
Total Corn, with the Different Fertilizers. 
O 
A. 
B. 
c. 
D. 
E. 
F. 
G. 
H. 
Number 
■ 
*8 
*8 
8 
CO 
OF 
O 
•2g 
8 
Expebi- 
$>. 
R 
o 
IN 
a, . 
§■§ 
O C -c: 
?bi 
8 Or? 
£ 
£ 
men r. 
13 
e 
8 
e 
§ 
a, 
£ 
* 
(C 
a. 
ft, 
8 
48 
46 
56 
58 
69 
63 
32 
86 
67 
64 
13 
28 
39 
73 
T2 
77 
95 
85 
83 
77 
59 
15 
94 
91 
9 > 
83 
95 
92 
85 
92 
62 
1? 
22 
26 
39 
67 
44 
27 
24 
21 
8 
56 
Z6 
HI 
56 
68 
43 
83 
52 
62 
84 
48 
58 
31 
34 
74 
91 
73 
76 
67 
80 
84 
71 
3 -Z 
19 
23 
30 
23 
28 
26 
29 
33 
37 
41 
33 
39 
31 
T3 
34 
61 
53 
49 
16 
26 
37 
63 
68 
88 
51 
86 
60 
80 
84 
68 
4 Z 
81 
87 
94 
95 
94 
96 
96 
95 
95 
43 
72 
57 
86 
52 
82 
48 
74 
45 
78 
44 
68 
65 
85 
64 
88 
89 
50 
86 
87 
90 
92 
90 
94 
93 
97 
94 
53 
68 
67 
71 
67 
69 
61 
67 
77 
67 
Average 14 
Exp’ts, ’79. 
Average 14 
Exp’ts, '78, 
56 
58 
72 
62 
73 
64 
61 
69 
85 
63 
73 
58 
65 
67 
72 
80 
72 
86 
86 
81 
The figures accord with common experience that 
the largest crop has the largest proportion of good 
corn. T see nothing to account for the poorer 
average quality in 1879, except the bad season. 
Ratio of Stalks to Shelled Corn. 
The weighings of com and stalks were made at 
different stages of dryness. In some eases the 
stalks were cut above the ears, in others elose to 
the ground. The results are consequently discrep¬ 
ant. The averages are interesting as showing the 
relative effects of the fertilizing materials. The 
figures represent the number of pounds of stalks to 
100 pounds of shelled corn in 12 experiments. 
Number of Pounds of Stalks to 100 Pounds of 
Shelled Corn. 
O 
A. 
B. 
C. 
Z>. 
E. 
F. 
G. 
B. 
Number 
OF 
Experi¬ 
ment. 
| Nothing. 
| Nitrogen. 
Phosphoric 
Acid. 
*8 
§ 
Nitrogen and 
Phosphoric 
Acid. 
\ Nitrogen and 1 
| Potash. 
Phosphoric 
Acid and 
Potash. 
§2 . 
$31 
fbg 
o ots 
| Plaster. 
3 
I 
s 
$ 
3 
374 
625 
262 
487 
383 
491 
320 
375 
437 
8 
124 
94 
107 
101 
70 
109 
JS8 
89 
117 
i.52 
15 
1(H) 
113 
205 
335 
122 
166 
307 
195 
429 
16 
281 
190 
164 
154 
137 
132 
136 
70 
271 
66 
17 
304 
228 
156 
174 
145 
226 
155 
144 
422 
131 
26 
108 
281 
no 
321 
86 
272 
192 
139 
93 
128 
31 
146 
134 
91 
11(1 
110 
139 
175 
152 
157 
34 
72 
95 
75 
75 
85 
98 
89 
97 
95 
88 
37 
184 
186 
135 
218 
140 
216 
155 
165 
186 
42 
98 
92 
90 
104 
95 
97 
98 
89 
96 
103 
45 
66 
96 
79 
72 
74 
69 
T2 
77 
76 
52 
158 
101 
163 
191 
110 
254 
141 
151 
188 
140 
Average 12 
Exp'ts, ’79. 
149 
156 
120 
168 
105 
162 
141 
124 
219 
115 
Average 10 
Exp’ts, ’78. 
173 
143 
149 
145 
129 
176 
128 
131 
139 
133 
The proportion of stalks to shelled corn is smaller 
in the larger crops, and conversely the poorer crops 
have more stalks for the same amount of corn than 
the better crops. Contrary to what is commonly 
supposed, the nitrogenous fertilizing materials do 
not seem to have increased the amount of stalks 
as compared with shelled corn. As to 
The Effects of the Fertilizers on Quality of 
Other Crops, 
there are but few reports. Several have spoken of 
the quality of the potatoes grown with chemicals 
as compared with farm manures. The nearly 
unanimous testimony is that the potatoes with ar¬ 
tificial fertilizers were of finer quality, and less dis¬ 
posed to rot than with the farm manures. The 
very general good results from the use of potash 
salts with potatoes, makes it very desirable to know 
the effect of muriate of potash upon the quality 
of the produce. It is commonly stated that pota¬ 
toes grown with the muriate (chloride), are less 
“mealy,” and more inclined to be “soggy” than 
with the sulphate. Such reports as I have, how¬ 
ever, represent the potatoes grown with the muriate 
as of entirely satisfactory quality. The sulphates 
are rather costly and variable in composition, while 
the muriate is reliable, and so concentrated and 
cheap as to be within the means of almost every 
one who has potatoes to grow. If it can be demon¬ 
strated to bring potatoes of good quality, it proves, 
and I certainly believe it will prove, of inestimable 
value for this purpose in all our older States. 
A Word to this Season’s Experimenters. 
I have given the above notes of what our experi¬ 
menters have been doing with a purpose. The 
blanks that are sent for reports of the experiments 
bear the motto : “ One great want of our Agricul¬ 
ture is closer study and observation by farmers." It 
is not merely the facts observed and reported, but 
the habit of accurate observation that will do good. 
To encourage this is one of the great objects for 
which the experiments have been planned. And 
so I trust the experimenters will pardon me if I re¬ 
peat here the requests made in the directions and 
blanks, that they make full and accurate reports of 
the details of their experiments. We want to know 
not simply how the superphosphate and potash 
salts, farm manures,and other materials, compare in 
the different trials, but how the results are affected 
by the different circumstances of soil,previous treat¬ 
ment, methods of tillage, of application of the fer¬ 
tilizer and cultivation of the crop, weather, effects 
in succeeding seasons and succeeding crops, and sa 
on. This collecting and comparing of the experi¬ 
ments of intelligent men under varying circum¬ 
stances, is one of the ways in which great good 
can be got from Science applied to Farming. 
W. O. Atw ater. 
