120 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
^merifcin 
New-York, Wednesday, May 3, 1854. 
Bound Volumes. —We have a few sets (26 
numbers) of volume eleventh, bound and un 
bound. The price, at the office, of the unbound 
volumes is $1.00. The bound volumes are neatly 
put up in cloth covers, gilt backs, at $1.50. 
We can also furnish the covers separately, 
gilt and all ready for putting in the paper, for 
twenty-five cents each. With the covers thus 
prepared, any bookbinder can complete the 
binding for twenty-five cents. Volumes sent to 
the office will be bound complete for fifty cents, 
We are having printed a new edition of the 
first ten annual volumes of the monthly Agri 
culturist, which can be supplied for $1.25 per 
volume or $10 for the set of ten volumes. 
Back Numbers. —We have taken the precau 
tion to print each week a large number of extra 
copies, so that we can still supply new subscri 
bers with full sets from the beginning of this 
volume, (March 15.) Any copies accidentally 
lost by a subscriber, will be freely supplied 
Specimen copies sent to any person, whose ad 
dress is furnished post-paid. 
A THING TO PLANT PEAS WITH, 
A brush seed-sower gives the uninitiated a 
very imperfect idea of one of the most conveni¬ 
ent garden implements ever invented. We re¬ 
cently tried one on our premises, for the first 
time, to the great astonishment of the function¬ 
aries, who only use the primitive seed-sowers 
thumb and fingers. Our assistants in the gar¬ 
den are Mercury —not the famous messenger of 
the heathen gods — but a gentleman of color, 
who does up the needful in the village gardens, 
as opportunity offers; and Uncle Jonathan, who 
does the all-work upon our premises. Both are 
somewhat set in their notions, and eschew all 
innovations upon the good old ways in which 
they have been educated. 
When the seed-sower was set down in the 
pea patch, Mercury gave the new comer a very 
significant grin, showing his ivory from ear to 
ear. Uncle Jonathan ventured to inquire “if 
there was some more book-farming ahead ?” 
“Shouldn’t wonder,” responded Mercury, 
“guess him is a new dung cart, to spread gua- 
ner and simperfospate, that the boss talks so 
much about.” 
The patch had been nicely manured and 
plowed, and a long line being stretched next to 
the wall, a bed about a foot wide had been 
nicely raked to clear it of stones and clods. 
“Now,” said we, “let us try this new wheel¬ 
barrow, Mercury, and see if we can’t get along 
a little faster planting peas, than we did last 
spring.” Adjusting the wheel to its place, and 
filling the hopper with peas, we started off, 
guiding the machine by the line. This seed- 
sower, as all know who have seen it operate, 
digs a trench for the seed, then covers, and rolls 
the soil over it. After the ground is prepared, 
a dri 1 may be planted as fast as you can push 
the wheel. Away we went the whole length of 
the patch, the peas rattling merrily, and the 
roller doing its work perfectly. 
“ There, Mercury, what do you think of that; 
two hours of hard back-aching work done up in 
ten minutes; and the peas sown much better 
than you could have done it with your hands, 
you had done your best?” 
Mercury’s eyes looked uncommonly large as 
he shook his head and said: 
“ Guess we better wait to see if the peas don 
grow down todder way.” 
“Wal neow,” exclaimed Uncle Jonathan as 
he leaned on his hoe handle, “that is rather 
curous. Du yew think them ere peas will come 
up?” 
“Come up! Why not? They are put in 
drill two inches deep, and as handsomely planted 
as you could do it with a hoe.” 
A few rounds with this seed-sower finished 
our job, and we had the pleasure of assuring 
our conservative assistants that we had paid for 
both of their day’s work in our brief use of this 
new fangled notion. It is evident that their 
faith in the primitive implements of culture is 
somewhat shaken, but they are not yet con 
verted. If the peas are not good, and fail to 
germinate, both of them will lay it to the me 
thod of planting, and triumphantly affirm that 
they knew it would be so. Almost all kinds ol 
garden seeds are sown with equal facility; and 
the implement, in a garden of the extent of an 
acre, will pay for itself twice over every sea¬ 
son. And yet, not one garden in a hundred has 
this simple labor-saving machine. Intelligen 
men are paying one dollar and a half a day for 
labor, and refusing to purchase a tool which 
will make one man do the work of five. The 
value of good tools, for the farm and garden, are 
not yet half appreciated. 
- • 6l-— 
WASTE MANURES. 
Many farmers thoughtlessly throw into the 
roads or the streams running near them, things 
which are highly valuable as fertilizers—sucl 
as corn cobs, the decayed vegetables and scrap¬ 
ings of their cellars, dead animals, pieces ol 
leather, old shoes and other clothing, hair, and 
even ashes. All these things should be added 
to the manure heap, and allowed to decompose 
and be mixed up with it. In our daily walks, 
we notice more or less of this waste, more par¬ 
ticularly among small farmers, some of whom 
are sending their money to the city for street 
manure, guano, poudrette, &c.; a cart load ol 
which they might annually make at home, at 
one-fourth the cost of what they pay for it 
abroad. Besides, such things lying about the 
house or outbuildings look very untidy, and 
often are extremely offensive and disgusting. 
BULLS AND MAKES IN BUENOS AT RES; 
We learn from Mr. Wm. Holly Hudson, 
gent of the U. S. and Paraguay Nav. Co., and 
recently from Buenos Ayres, that during the 
three months prior to his leaving, there were 
immediately around the above city, according 
to official report, forty-eight thousand mares 
slaughtered for their hides and tallow. This is 
softer than beef tallow, but is used mostly for 
similar purposes. Large quantities are sent to 
the New-York market. The owner of a singlt- 
estate in looking over his cattle concluded there 
were too many bulls for the good of the drove, 
and decided to thin them out. Between seven 
and eight thousand bulls were killed in this 
single thinning. This is vouched for as the 
literal truth. 
BARN CELLARS-FARMING IN RHODE ISLAND. 
In a recent trip through the town of Wester- 
lejq R. I, ( vve were struck with this evidence of 
the progress of agriculture. Every new barn 
put up within the last five years was furnished 
with this important appendage. We started to 
visit the farm of a gentleman who had made 
himself somewhat famous by the changes be 
had wrought in a little worn-out farm, a short 
distance from the village. The soil in this 
town is, much of it, very light; and this farm 
was, nearly all of it, a miserable goose pasture 
when it came into new hands. Stable manure 
from the village was drawn out in liberal quan¬ 
tities, and applied to the corn fields. A new 
barn was built, and soon filled with hay. This 
soon became too straight for the increasing 
products of the farm, and another was built 
much larger, with a commodious cellar, some 
ten feet deep, under it. This receptacle gets 
well filled with manure every year, and tells 
upon the corn fields. On those starved fields, 
where less than a hundred bushels of corn could 
be raised, a thousand bushels now grow, to the 
great satisfaction of the owner. Besides this, 
some eighty tons of hay are cut to fill those 
ample mows. Fields cleaned of stones, and new 
walls, yellow from their fresh beds in the iron 
soil, are every where visible from these new 
barns. The neighbors on either side, have felt 
the contagion of this good example, and built 
large cellars under their barns. These cellars 
and the muck swamps have had a meeting, and 
formed a conspiracy against the worn-out farms 
of Rhode Island. The Mullein plantations that 
once flourished so conspicuously in all this re¬ 
gion, are going dowm before this formidable 
combination. Dorr’s rebellion was not a cir¬ 
cumstance to this treason against the standing 
order of Mullein. The reign of this ancient and 
venerable plant is broken, and if the conspira¬ 
tors push their work vigorously, it will not 
be long before there will not be a remnant of 
Mullein for herb drink. 
Rhode Island lias a vigorous State Agricul¬ 
tural Society, and the State is so small, and so 
favored with railroads and steamboats, that this 
Society can easily do up the work of the county 
Societies. The annual exhibitions of this Society 
at Providence, the distribution of its transactions, 
and the circulation of agricultural papers among 
the people, have done a great work for Rhode 
Island husbandry. We rejoice in it heartily, 
and would take occasion to speak a word of en¬ 
couragement to our brethren of the agricultural 
press. They often look despondingly upon 
their past efforts, and think that this and that 
article exhorting to improvement, were lost 
efforts. Sitting in their chairs, perhaps in the 
city, far away from the fields of toil, which 
their thoughts are making green and fruitful, 
they think their task both thankless and use¬ 
less. It is not so. No class in the community 
are improving so surely as the farmers. The 
eaders and thinkers among them are multiply- 
ng every year. The good seed that is sown 
springs up and bears fruit. That article on 
soiling Cattle with Indian corn, written three 
years ago, led to a dozen experiments the first 
year, and these led to a hundred the second; 
