3 GO, 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
$25 ; six bushels of refuse salt, $1 ; dissolved 
bones, $4 ; equal to $40 for manure. Cost of 
plowing, subsoiling, cultivation and harvesting, 
$30; making .$70 as the cost of production, or 
$11.67 per acre. Ninety bushels of corn peracre, 
worth $45 at the lowest, and the corn fodder is 
worth ten more, making over forty dollars profit. 
And this is only the beginning of the difference 
be.ween an acre of his meadow and an acre of 
yours. With twenty-five bushels of corn to the 
acre you get no profit, and only poor pay for your 
labor Higgins will stock down his meadow with 
oats next Sprng, and get s'xty bushels of oats to 
the acre, and for four yea , after will average two 
and a-half tons of hay to the acre, with a good 
bite of after feed. You will not get over twenty 
bushels of oats, and will not average one ton of 
hay to the acre for the same period. Higgins 
will cut his hay and oats with a horse mower, 
you will cut yours with a scythe. His labor bills 
will not exceed yours. He will average ten or 
twelve dollars profit on every acre under the plow 
or grass. You will simply get poor pay for your 
labor, and a poor living 
The remedy for your difficulties is not “ emi¬ 
gration,” but in better husbandry. Your system 
of cultivation would ruin both farm and tenant, 
in any country or climate. You starve your 
acres, and they starve you. You only make a 
miserable hundred loads of manure with your fif¬ 
teen head of cattle. You might make five hun¬ 
dred of better quality. There is a muck swamp 
within a half mile of your barn, and upon the 
borders of that light sandy plain, where it is so 
much needed. There is the cove with its treas¬ 
ures of mud and sea-weed, within a mile of your 
door, and you all the while growing poor and dis¬ 
heartened, and meditating emigration as a sort of 
revenge upon the soil. Make this muck emigrate 
to your cow-yard, and your corn-fields, and you 
may spare yourself the trouble of going West. 
Your meadows will laugh and grow fat, the tin 
will stick in your pocket, and the next time I call 
I will find you shaking your sides with Higgins 
over ninety acres of shelled corn to the acre. 
Small Pens for Fattening Pigs. 
This is a matter of much more importance 
than might appear at first glance. Our attention 
has been called to it by an uneasy, frisky sow, 
that we had occasion to purchase in September. 
She had enjoyed the run of a pasture during the 
Summer, and was thin in flesh. We put her into 
a large pen, about 12 by 30 feet, and though she 
hail fattening food in abundance, she kept so con¬ 
stantly upon the move, that the food seemed to 
help her very little. She had a comfortable, dry 
sleeping apartment, with plenty of hay, but if she 
slept well by night there was no rest by day. Af¬ 
ter several weeks of this regimen, we yarded 
off a corner of the pen, making it about 8 feet 
square. Her errant propensities were cured at 
once, she takes her rations with decided gusto, 
and sleeps well between meals. There was a 
rapid increase of flesh and fat soon after the close 
yarding. 
From observations, extending over a dozen years 
or more, made in villages and in the rural dis¬ 
tricts, we have noticed that the fattest and best 
pork is made in the former, where one or two pigs 
are usually kept in a small pen. The villager has 
but small room, and crowds his pig into narrow 
quarters for the whole year. It is fed on slops 
for eight months, and for the last four is crammed 
with scalded Indian meal. He gets pork of de¬ 
cidedly better quality than he can purchase, and 
gets it cheaper. The whole energy of the ani¬ 
mal is forced by his training into the production 
of flesh and fat. 
The pigs of the farmer, on the other hand, run 
in a pasture, or on the common, for six or eight 
months, and are shut up a dozen or more in a 
large pen to fatten, because he has plenty of 
room. The energy of the animal has gone very 
much to the development of snout and feet, and 
the propensity to run and to root is not circum¬ 
scribed very much in his roomy pen. By Christ¬ 
mas he is not more than two-thirds fattened, and 
he has consumed quite as much as the village 
pig, which is ready for the knife. We have two 
yearling pigs, good for four hundred and fifty 
pounds of pork by Christmas, that have never 
been out of a pen, eight feet by twelve, since they 
were eight weeks old. Small pens, kept dry, and 
regular feeding is the secret of their thrift. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
A Crack in the Hog-Trough- 
Some time ago a friend sent me word that he 
gave, every day, nearly twenty pails of buttermilk 
to a lot of shoats, and they scarcely improved a 
bit on it. Thinks I, this is a breed of hogs worth 
seeing—they must be of the sheet-iron kind. So 
I called on him, heard him repeat the mournful 
tale, and then visited the sty. In orde r to get a 
closer view of the miraculous swine I went into 
the pen, and on close examination found a crack 
in the trough, through which much of the con¬ 
tents ran away under the floor. 
Thinks I, here is the type of much of the fail¬ 
ures and misfortunes of our agricultural breth¬ 
ren. When I see a farmer omitting all improve¬ 
ments because of a little cost, selling all his good 
farm stock to buy bank, or railroad, or mortgage 
stock ; robbing his land, while in reality he is 
also robbing himself and his heirs—thinks I, my 
friend, you have a crack in your hog-trough. 
When I see a farmer subscribing for half a 
dozen political and miscellaneous papers, and 
spending all his leisure reading them, while he 
don’t read a single agricultural or horticultural 
journal—thinks I to myself, poor man, you have 
got a large and wide crack in your hog-trough. 
When I see a farmer attending all the political 
conventions, and coming down liberally with the 
dust on all caucus occasions; knowing every 
man in the town that votes bis ticket; and yet to 
save his neck, couldn’t tell who is president of 
his County Agricultural Society, or where the 
fair was held last year, I “ unanimously ” come to 
the conclusion that the poor soul has got a crack 
in his hog-trough. 
When I see a farmer buying guano, but wast¬ 
ing ashes and hen manure, trying all sorts of ex¬ 
periments except intelligent hard work and econ¬ 
omy ; getting the choicest seeds regardless of 
expense, and then planting them regardless of 
cultivation and good sense ; growing the variety 
of fruit called “ Sour Tart Seedling,” and sweet¬ 
ening it with sugar, pound for pound ; keeping the 
front fields rich and neat, while the back lots are 
overgrown with elders, briars, snap-dragon, and 
thistles ; contributing liberally to the Choctaw In¬ 
dian Fund, and never giving a cent to any agri¬ 
cultural society—such a man I will give a written 
guarantee has got a crack in both his head and 
his hog-trough. 
When I see a farmer spending his time travel¬ 
ling and visiting in a carriage, when he has to 
sell all his corn to pay the hired help: and his 
hogs are so lean that they have to lean against 
a fence to sustain themselves while squealing, I 
rather lean to the conclusion that somebody that 
stays at home will have a lien on the farm, and 
some day the bottom come entirely out of his 
hog-trough. Orange County Farmer. 
- - --*»«<■——. «■- 
Chinese Sugar Cane not Poisonous 
We have said little of this crop recently, pre¬ 
ferring to quietly wait awhile and let it prove it¬ 
self. We have lost none of our first interest in 
this subject, though some of our jealous cotem¬ 
poraries have amused themselves by attempting to 
depreciate or distort the motives which led us to 
scatter it over the country for experiment. But 
enough on this point. There have been some feai3 
that the Chinese Sugar Cane is injurious to ani¬ 
mals—even poisonous. We have constantly as¬ 
serted to the contrary. Among a thousand proofs 
of this, we present the following communication 
to the Charleston Mercury, from A. G. Sumner, 
Esq., of Pomaria, S. C., who ought certainly tc 
be good authority. He writes : 
“I have fed this plant to all kinds of stock, as 
fodder, for the past season, in every stage of its 
growth—green, ripe, and cuied. I have found it 
the best soiling plant 1 ever raised—horses, 
mules, sheep, swine, goats and cattle, rapidly fat¬ 
ten when fed on it. I fed two hundred and fifty 
bushels of the seed during last Winter to 
sheep, goats and poultry, and I attach the relative 
value of oats to it as Winter food for these ani¬ 
mals. In April last I sowed twenty acres broad¬ 
cast in sugar millet, intending it as a pasturage 
for calves and milch cows. On the first of July 
I turned the milch cows, sheep, goats, calves, 
swine and geese upon it, and have not lost a sin¬ 
gle animal. They have all improved rapidly, and 
although I have large numbers on the field, the 
herbage bids fair to keep ahead of all demands 
made on it. I made it a point to take my animals 
from good pastures, and fed them well before 
turning them in, allowing them plenty of salt. H 
a half-starved cow is turned on wheat, peas, oi 
Indian Corn, she is just as likely to die from over¬ 
eating these crops as she is from Chinese Sugar 
Cane. The disease which kills hungry cattle 
when over fed on [this or any other ] green food is 
termed Hoove, the best cure for which is a drench 
of salt dissolved in a gallon of water. This will 
relieve an animal sometimes in a minute. Peas, 
of all green food, is the most dangerous, from 
the flatulent nature of the plant. I have frequent¬ 
ly seen half a dozen cows die in a few hours 
after they were turned into a luxuriant pea field 
in the Fall, and have as frequently seen others 
relieved by the above dose. A cow which, like 
the asses of Ephriam, had been feeding on the 
East wind during the Winter, and grazed upon the 
roadsides and bushes, might be expected to die 
from joy after an overfeed of sugar millet. I have 
sowed broadcast at the rate of one and a-halt 
bushels of sugar-cane seed to the acre, a mea¬ 
dow'which I intend to conveit into good nutri¬ 
tious hay for Winter food. I think more cows 
will die for the want of this food in our State than 
from being over-fed on it. I do not think, with 
the proper precautions, it is in any way more 
dangerous than any other green food we are ac¬ 
customed to feed, and would advise its extended 
use as a soiling and hay crop in the South. 
The mist that hangs like silver curtains around 
the plains before sunrise, and is lifted by day’s 
golden cords out of our sight, lias death in the 
woof; it is woven here and there of fatal threads. 
The water that has no taste is purest; the rain 
that has no odor is freshest; and of all the modi¬ 
fications of manner, the most generally pleasing 
is simplicity. 
