I 860 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
15 
them off entirely. But now, having had full 
swing for several years, they laugh at the shift¬ 
less man’s puny efforts and windy threats. But 
this is not the worst of the evil. The neighbor¬ 
ing farmers are active, enterprising men, and 
have done their best to keep their land clear of 
foul roots, but the seeds blow over in clouds from 
the shiftless man’s fields, and they are almost in 
despair. What can they do ? 
He keeps poor fences. When he sees a rail bro¬ 
ken here, a board off there, or a post rotten and 
falling down beyond, he is very sorry, and hopes 
a good time will soon come for fence-mending ; 
but he don’t repair it at once. Bad becomes 
worse ; hungry cattle leap the tottering fence, 
and down it all comes : wheat fields, and corn 
fields, ami hay fields are trampled down ; the 
farmer suffers loss, and, very likely he and his 
neighbors are soon having a delightful law-suit. 
These are only a few broad lines of our por¬ 
trait : the likeness will probably be detected 
without any further touches of the brush. 
--» o t Trrja OP 58 "-- 
For the American Agriculturist. 
Tim Bunker oa giving Land a Start. 
Mr. Eoitor.— “ What are ye gwine to du with 
that are bag of Scotch Snuff !” asked Jake Frink, 
one morning as he looked at a lot of Peruvian 
No. 1, just landed at my barn door. 
“ Who has a better right to have a quilling 
than Mrs. Bunker, and to entertain the old ladies 
with a pinch of the Scotch dust 1” I asked by way 
of rejoinder, and to stimulate Jake’s curiosity, 
which was already wide awake. 
“ I thought snuff allers come in bladders ” sug¬ 
gested Seth Twigs, as he blew out a column of 
smoke, that would have done credit to a locomo¬ 
tive. - 
“ How du ye know but what it is a whale’s 
bladder !” inquired Tucker, who had been to sea, 
and was anxious to show off his nautical knowl¬ 
edge, to Mr. Twiggs. 
‘‘That’s guanner ye fools" remarked uncle Joth- 
am Sparrowgrass, with a very emphatic blow of 
his cane upon the ground. “ Haven’t ye never 
seen any guanner! I’ve seen it a dozen year ago, 
over on the island—Judge Randall tried it time 
and agin.—Never could make much out of it. 
He got one or tu decent crops, and then the land 
fell off, worse than ever. The judge said it was 
a great humbug. Guess he’s right.” 
“ Yc aint a gwine to put that on tu the land, 
be ye Squire Bunker!” inquired Jake with an as¬ 
tonished look. 
“ I shouldn’t wonder if I did.” 
This conversation with my neighbors, two years 
ago, shows the general impression about guano 
in any community, when it is first introduced. I 
had got it to try an experiment on some poor land, 
that lay off a couple of miles from my house. I 
suppose.a man .ought to apologize for owning 
land so far from home, for it is certainly very 
bad husbandry. The expense of cultivating it is 
nearly double that of a home lot, and manuring 
with stable dung at that distance is out of the 
question. The fact is, the land belongs to Mrs. 
Bunker, and, as it came from her father, she nev¬ 
er felt like selling it. It has been used for pas¬ 
ture ever since I can remember. For the last ten 
years I have not been very particular about pas¬ 
turing it, for there was not much grass there to be 
saten. It was miserable old plain land, and had 
once been a light sandy loam, before the loam 
was carried off in crops. It bore five-fingers and 
moss pretty well, was fair for pennyroyal, and 
famous for mulleins and sweet fern. The sheep 
had worn little paths around among these brush, 
and if sheep have any virtue to restore exhausted 
land, that field never found it out. I suppose all 
the vegetable matter that grew upon an acre, if 
it could have been gathered, would not have 
weighed two hundred pounds. It used to be said 
of it, that it was too poor to bear worms and in¬ 
sects, so that skunks had to starve or emigrate. 
We have a great deal of such land in all the old 
States, thoroughly worn out, and not paying the 
interest on three dollars an acre, to their present 
owners. They are generally farmers in moder¬ 
ate circumstances, and have no spare capital to 
give such land a start, and it lies idle and worth¬ 
less. I thought it was worth trying to give this 
outdot a chance to do a little better by itself, 
and its owner. My plan was to turn in green 
crops, a process in husbandry, that no body prac¬ 
tices in this neighborhood. I had read of it in my 
Agriculturist, and thought it was just the thing 
for lots too far off from the barn to be manured 
from the stable. The trouble was to get the 
green crop to turn under. 
I thought the guano would probably start rye, 
and with this I could make a beginning. I plowed 
up five acres two years ago in October, and put 
on five bags of guano, or about one hundred and 
fifty pounds to the acre. The rye came up well, 
and looked a remarkably dark green, and by the 
time snow felL, the ground was well covered with 
a thick mat of rye. That rye made a good deal 
of talk, and even on Sunday it used to be discuss¬ 
ed between meetings, when folks ought to have 
been thinking on other matters. It passed the 
Winter well, got a good start in the Spring, and 
by the middle of May, the heads began to appear. 
It stood thick, and was thought to be one of the 
best looking pieces of rye in town. It went against 
the grain amazingly to turn it under, for accord¬ 
ing to the look, I should have had fifteen bushels 
to the acre. 
About the middle of June, John and I went into 
it, with two teams, to plow it under; for I had 
made my plan, and was not to be turned aside by 
the talk of my neighbors. Tucker and Jones said 
it was a great shame to spoil such a field of grain, 
and even Mr. Spooner remarked, that making 
manure of bread stuff, did not seem- to be very 
good economy. Now, you see, I did not care so 
much what George Washington Tucker and Ben¬ 
jamin Franklin Jones said, but I did not like to 
be undervalued by the minister. So said I to 
Mr. Spooner.: “A thing always looks homely until 
it’s finished ; and you just wait till I get through 
with this field, before you make up your mind.” 
The rye was plowed under, and the ground 
turned up about two inches deeper than ever be¬ 
fore. In about a fortnight I sowed buckwheat, 
harrowing it in with about the same quantity of 
guano, that I had used in the rye. The buck? 
wheat came up and grew more rankly than any 
thing I ever saw before. All the neighbors were 
astonished at the monstrous growth, and most 
astonished when I brought out the teams, the 
last of August, to turn it under. They said' Tim 
Bunker must be crazy to make manure of the 
heaviest crop of buckwheat in town. But the 
buckwheat went under notwithstanding. The last 
of September, I sowed with rye again, and as I 
had put two green crops under the sod, I thought 
the land had got start enough to take care of it¬ 
self. I sowed with the rye, clover and herds- 
grass seed, calculating that these would take the 
ground, when the rye came off. Last July 1 har¬ 
vested from that five acre field, one hundred and 
twenty-five bushels of rye worth as many dollars. 
They have got to making paper out of the straw, 
so that I got ten dollars a tun for that or about 
seventy-five dollars. 
Now, every man who is used to ciphering can 
tell whether the operation paid or not. The crop, 
I consider worth two hundred dollars, to say 
nothing of the fine catch of grass, which now 
promises, at least a tun and a half of hay to the 
acre. The cost of the manure was about forty- 
five dollars. T e labor of plowing, sowing, har¬ 
vesting, and tb grass seed would, perhaps, swell 
the cost of th Improvement to one hundred and 
fifty dollars This leaves a handsome sum or. 
the right side of the balance sheet, and the land 
in much bette? condition. The old plain would 
have been well sold at five dollars an acre, for it 
did not pay the interest on half that sum. I 
should not want to sell now at ten dollars an 
acre. The experiment has worked much better 
than I thought it would. 
Now, I think we have here a hint as to the 
economical way of giving land a start. If it lies 
near the barn, where manure can be carted cheap¬ 
ly, the stable manure is the best renovator. If it 
lies at a distance it can be done with Peruvian 
No. 1, and green crops, and it is much belter to 
do it with this than to have it lie idle. Mrs. Bunk¬ 
er is as much pleased with the result as any body 
for she says “ it has always distressed her to 
have any thing belonging to the Bunker family 
lying idle.” Yours to command, 
Timothy Bunker, Esq, 
Hooker town, Dec. 10, 1859. 
Nebraska Correspondence—Insects on 
Apple Trees. 
To the Editor of the American Agriculturist: 
Crops in Nebraska have been good, except po¬ 
tatoes, which were light. We had the first dam¬ 
aging frost about Sept. 20, but corn was mostly 
ripe. The probability is that we shall have food* 
enough of our own production, which has not 
been the case previously since the settlement of 
this Territory._I send you enclosed some sam¬ 
ples of flies with which my trees were covered 
in September, and wish to know whether they 
are the “borers”—at all events they bore holes 
an inch in depth in my trees, commencing gener¬ 
ally in the forks at the intersection of small! 
branches. I have taken from.’ one small tree as- 
many as forty of the nests enclosing worms. I 
also find upon the trees many of a species of spi¬ 
der. Whether they destroy the insects referred, 
to, or are in pursuit of other prey, I can not tell. 
My trees are still thrifty, but I fear they will be’ 
killed by the boring operation. 
Douglas Co., Nebraska. E. P. BREWSTEU- 
Rcmarks. —The flies sent, were too muefh 
crushed in the letter to be examined well. They 
appear to be what are called the “ harvest flies,”’ 
(cicadas) which are sometimes quite destructive 
to apple and other trees by boring into the 
branches. The real borer ( saperda hivitlata) lays its 
eggs'upon the bark, usually near the root, and the 
worms hatched out, begin to bore inward almost 
as soon as hatched. We know of no means of de¬ 
stroying the cicada, as they are scattered through 
the entire branches, and any offensive wash or 
powder w’ould be difficult of application. They 
are usually of short duration. Then most de¬ 
structive enemies are flocks of birds.—En.j 
--o -*-——car t el i —*-«>. - 
A person passing through the country, observed 
the following notice on a board : “ Horses taken 
in to grass. Long tails, three shillings and six¬ 
pence ; short tails, two shillings." The owner 
of the land being asked the reason for the differ¬ 
ence of the price, answered : “You see, the long: 
tails can brush away the flies; but the short tailar 
are so tormented by them, that they can hardly 
I eat at all.” 
