260 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
grain of corn, whether wheat, barley, or oats, 
sown in the United Kingdom, simply from its ex 
treme thickness, does not, and cannot yield om 
ordinary ear, say 40 fold, (nay, not oven half as 
much,) from each grain; and wero it so, as a 
necessary consequence, it would produce, of 
course, 40 times as much per acre as is sown, 
say two bushels or 128 pints of wheat, and 8 
bushels or 192 pints of barley and oats, as ai 
average quantity of seed usually sown. But 
such crops are never realized. Objections are 
raised, that by thin sowing late mildewed crops 
are sometimes the consequence; granted—brn 
sowing early will be found to obviate this evil, 
and insure more forward and bountiful harvests 
—-Hardy and Son, Maldon, Essex, in Agricul¬ 
tural Gazette. 
THE POINTS OF THE SPANISH FOWL, 
There have of late been many inquiries and 
remarks in the “ Poultry Chronicle" respecting 
Spanish fowls, and, as misapprehensions seen 
to exist on several points, I have thought i 
would be acceptable to your readers if I gave a 
short description of them, and of what are con 
sidered their principal merits in competition. 
Toe cocks should have upright, the hens, fall¬ 
ing combs; but there is a peculiarity in this 
point, that birds reversing the carriage of 
combs, with perfectly white faces, would b« 
jumped more meritorious than others, faultless 
in this particular, but having red intermixed 
with white. It cannot be too strongly impressed 
on Spanish breeders and amateurs, that th> 
purely white face is the most arbitrary rule ii 
judging fowls in this breed, and will cover 
many trifling deficiencies. Of course, the plu¬ 
mage should be black, without mixture of any 
other color. The body should incline to a 
point, every way, to the tail, which should be 
ample, and carried cheerfully. The head should 
be longhand the face skinny; the beak strong; 
the legs long, compared with many other breeds, 
and, invariably, of a leaden blue shade. 
Altnough cocks at seven months, and pullets 
at ten, ought to give promise of what they will 
be when they come to maturity, yet I would 
not advise the beginner to be precipitate in 
forming a judgment, and condemning those that 
are not apparently perfect, as many, and more 
especially pullets, are from eighteen months to 
two years in becoming really white, and it is 
undeniable that a Spanish hen improves up to 
three years old.— Xcres, in Poultry Chronicle. 
UNUSUAL HEROISM OF A COCHIN CHINA 
FOWL. 
Perhaps, where opposed by so strong and 
poweful an antagonist, there has never been 
recorded an equal instance of determined valor, 
and dogged perseverance on the part of a fowl, 
as that displayed by the hero of the following 
anecdote. A gentleman having purchased at a 
public sale a pair of two-year-old Cochin fowls, 
took them to a property where they enjoyed 
the run of a large yard, unmolested by any 
Other poultry. In less than three weeks the 
hen was found to have “stolen a nest,” on the 
bare ground, behind some old timber in a va¬ 
cant stable, and was sitting on fourteen eggs. 
The male bird seemed unusually interested in 
her occupation, and seated himself regularly 
about a yard from his mate nearly the whole of 
his time. Their owner, however, was not a little 
annoyed to find that during the night an egg 
had been purloined from the sitting hen; and 
later in the same day still another was missing. 
Acting under the impression that his losses pro¬ 
ceeded from some youths in a workshop that 
overlooked his yard, (and whom he had fre¬ 
quently heard speak covetously of his favorites,) 
he determined to watch for the intruder, through 
a small fissure in an adjoining building. 
Shortly after taking his position, he observed a 
large rat creep stealthily towards the nest; on 
its approach the hen raised herself, but though 
apparently much alarmed, offered no opposition, 
and the rat, after several ineffectual attempts, 
rolled an egg gently from the nest, and con¬ 
tinued pushing it with its head towards a hoh 
about five or six feet distant. At this junc¬ 
ture the cock, which till now had appeared 
quite a passive spectator of the whole affair, 
suddenly rushed upon the aggressor, and follow¬ 
ing up his advantages by a rapid succession ol 
blows with the feet and spurs, still persevered, 
until he had driven the rat into a corner; here, 
however, a change took place in “ the fortune 
of war;” and the latter, summoning up all its 
courage, jumped upon the head of the cock, in¬ 
flicting at the same time a serious bite through 
'he swallow, which caused the fowl to fall from it.- 
'eet and struggle violently with its wings. Tin 
owner, greatly troubled at this apparently une¬ 
qual contest now hastened to the rescue; hi.- 
surprise, however was great on finding, whei 
he reached the combatants, the cock standing 
upon the rat, which had fixed firm hold of its 
opponent through the foot. This strange war 
'are was “allowed now to take its own course,” 
and soon drew to a close, for the Cochin seized 
its adversary by the nape of the neck, and a> 
one pull literally scalped it. From the hemor¬ 
rhage that instantly took place, the result wa.- 
no longer dubious, the gripe of the rat slack 
ened, and he sank dead at the feet of our coura¬ 
geous favorite. The matter, however, was not 
altogether settled, for after two or three exul 
ant crowings, the Cochin commenced a canni¬ 
bal’s feast, devouring the head, and part of tin 
■ntestines. The writer of this paragraph saw 
the remnants of the defeated the same evening ; 
they then weighed three quarters of a pound 
Great inflammation ensued to the cock’s wounds, 
no being bitten in eleven places, chiefly about 
the comb and wattles, but it is satisfactory t> 
relate he at length perfectly recovered.— E., in 
Poultry Chronicle. 
MIXING SAWDUST WITH MANURES. 
The manufacture of Animal and Vegetable 
Matters—such a* fish refuse, butchers’ offal, 
urine, sawdust, moss or peat earth—into ma¬ 
nure, and their application to the soil, has long 
been a subject of anxious inquiry; an that 
part of it involved in the proposition of Lord 
Berners, of mixing sawdust with sheep’s dung 
and urine, like other suggestions for economiz¬ 
ing the volatile and soluble elements of manure- 
on the farm, now so frequently wasted, is de¬ 
serving of special notice at this time. 
Glancing briefly at old practices first, out 
forefathers used sawdust for littering their sta¬ 
bles, cow houses, sheep-pens, piggeries, and 
poultry houses, the whole being afterwards 
mixed together and used as farm-yard manure. 
Sawyers and carpenters, again, who had none 
of the above provisions, mixed it in their dung¬ 
hills for growing potatoes; while fishermen 
used it for smoking fish, and mixing in their 
ash-pits along with fish refuse, selling the com¬ 
post to farmers. With these practices many 
localities are familiar to this day, and have been 
so from time immemorial. 
Of these plans, the mixing of sawdust with 
sheep’s dung, urine, slaughterhouse and fish 
offal, is, perhaps, the most deserving of consid¬ 
eration, because the fermentative qualities of 
such articles are the best adapted to overcome 
the comparatively indestructible nature of the 
dust. Hitherto the great objection to sawings 
of wood, as manure, has been their slow decom¬ 
position. Immediate activity is necessary to 
give value to manure, and this is what sawdust 
does not possess. Excrementary and offal mat¬ 
ters, on the contrary, are from their nature 
subject to rapid decomposition, so much so, that 
half their fertilizing value is not unfrequently 
lost. Indeed it is impossible to estimate the 
loss arising from this source. Now, if the mix¬ 
ing of the two together will effect the decompo¬ 
sition of the former, while it avoids the loss sus¬ 
tained in the latter, the gain must consequently 
be great. 
What gives peculiar value to composts of this 
kind is their disintegrated state; they are fit for 
killing in along with the seed by corn or tur¬ 
nip drills at once. Their freencss from sand 
and other heavy and comparatively useless min¬ 
eral substances is another merit. The differ¬ 
ence between the expense of applying farm- 
yard manure and guano, for instance, is consid- 
rable, while the advantages gained by expedi- 
don in seed time are even of greater importance. 
The addition of 50 per cent, of sand and clay 
as when urine, fish gut, &c., were mixed with 
-arth) doubles the expense and time of applica- 
ion ; and this, if the distance is great, may ex¬ 
ceed the value of the manure itself. 
The prime cost of the article would bo little 
more than the carriage, while in most localities 
i he supply would obviously be great. We have 
>nly to examine our timber yards for evidence 
of this. How many ing- nious plans have even 
been contrived for carrying the sawdust down 
the stream which drives the saw-mill, or into 
'ho fire of the steam engine where steam power 
s used. 
Now that artificial manures have become an 
agricultural necessity, it is the duty as well as 
i he interest of every one to look first to the re- 
-ources within his own reach for a supply, and 
lastly to the market for any balance required. 
Co neglect the former, relying entirely upon the 
atter for Peruvian guano, &c., and then com¬ 
plain of high prices, is inconsistency and folly. 
Were every farmer to procure annually so many 
ons of sawdust, ground peat, or charred vege- 
able matter of any kind, which could be had for 
ittle money, and to mix them with the excre¬ 
ments of horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, &c,, 
dding such other articles as peculiar circum¬ 
stances required, it would exercise a very salu¬ 
tary effect upon the extravagant prices now 
paid for all kinds of artificial manutes. If a 
farmer can thus manufacture at home a--' good 
an article for 20.v. as he can purchase for £5, 
(and this can be done in many cases,) the course 
which he ought to steer is plain .—Agricultural 
Gazette. 
VARIETY OF FOOD NECESSARY. 
It is in vegetable as in animal life; a mother 
crams her child exclusively with arrow-root—it 
becomes fat, it is true, but, alas 1 it is rickety, 
and gets its teeth very slowly, and with diffi¬ 
culty. Mamma is ignorant, or never thinks, 
that her offspring cannot make bone—or, what 
s the same thing, phosphate of lime, the prin¬ 
cipal bulk of bone—out of starch. It does its 
best; and were it not for a little milk and 
bread, perhaps now and then a little meal and 
soup, it would have no bones and teeth at all. 
Farmers keep poultry; and what is true of 
fowls is true of cabbage, a turnip, or an ear of 
wheat. If we mix with the food of fowls a suf¬ 
ficient quantity of egg-shells or chalk, which 
they eat greedily, they will lay many more eggs 
than before. A well-fed fowl is disposed to lay 
a vast number of eggs, but cannot do so without 
the materials for the shells, however nourishing 
in other respects her food may be. A fowl, 
with the best will in the world, not finding any 
lime in the soil, nor mortar from walls, nor cal¬ 
careous matter in her food, is incapacitated from 
laying any eggs at all. Let farmers lay such 
facts as these, which are matters of common ob¬ 
servation, to heart, and transfer the analogy, as 
they may do, to the habits of plants, which are 
as truly alive, and answer as closely to every 
injudicious treatment, as their own horse. 
-»-o •- 
Composition of Milk. —Milk, according to 
the analysis of Henri and Chevalier, is com¬ 
posed as follows: 
Casein, pure curd, - - 4-48 
Butter,.3*13 
Milk sugar, - - - - 4-77 
Saline matter, - - - Q'CO 
Water, - - ' - - 87-02 
10000 
