234 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[August. 
“ Stick to the Farm.” 
Let us sing a snatch from this good old song. 
Yes, stick to the farm. If half the time and en¬ 
ergy now wasted in politics, hazardous specula¬ 
tions, and busy idleness, were spent in the ad¬ 
vancement of agriculture ; if the people were as 
intent on preserving their farms from deteriora¬ 
tion, as they are in “ preserving the Union,” and 
settling the manifold vexed questions of the day ; 
if they were half as earnest in battling with bri¬ 
ers and weeds, and poor fences and bad soils, as 
■with their political opponents, should we not be 
better off as a nation and as individuals'! 
Why is England to-day the garden of Europe, 
unless it is because every acre is so wisely cul¬ 
tivated ! Why is even barren New-England made 
so productive, unless because of the industry and 
intelligence of her agriculturists ! Well has one 
said : “ The fields ought to be the morning and 
evening theme of all Americans who love their 
country. To fertilize and improve his farm, 
ought to be the prime temporal object of every 
owner of the substantial soil. All national ag¬ 
grandizements, power, and wealth, may be traced 
to agriculture as its ultimate source. Commerce 
and agriculture are only subordinate results of 
this main-spring. We consider agriculture as 
every way subsidiary not only to abundance, in¬ 
dustry, comfort, and health, but to good morals, 
and ultimately even to religion itself.....” 
We shall always sing “Speed the plow!” we 
shall always regard the American farmer, dres¬ 
sed for his employment, and tilling his grounds, 
as belonging to the order of real noblemen. * 
Lois "Weedon Culture. 
In England, where, owing to the high rent paid 
for land it is necessary to resort to every expe¬ 
dient for increasing its fertility, the agricultural 
community have lately been much exercised upon 
the subject of what is termed the “ Lois Weedon ” 
system of wheat growing. The name is derived 
from the place where it originated, the vicarage 
of Lois Weedon, in Northamptonshire. The Vicar, 
Rev. Samuel Smith, fourteen years since, conceiv¬ 
ing that much of success in wheat raising depends 
upon keeping the soil in proper mechanical 
condition, selected a field of four acres for a trial 
of the following experiment. After two crops in 
the ordinary rotation followed there, (first oats, 
and then vetches) wheat was drilled in triple 
rows one foot apart, with intervals of three feet 
left vacant between each strip of wheat. These 
vacant spaces were dug deeply with the fork 
spade, bringing up about two inches of the under¬ 
lying yellow subsoil. During the Spring these 
fallow strips were occasionally loosened to with¬ 
in three inches of the growing wheat, and the 
weeds kept down by proper hoeing, until the 
spreading roots occupied the ground. After the 
crop was harvested, wheat was sown in the fal¬ 
low spaces, in triple rows as before, and the 
stubble left from the previous crop wgs turned 
under to remain fallow the following year. This 
alternate cropping and fallowing of intermediate 
strips has been continued in this field until thir¬ 
teen successive crops of wheat have been gath¬ 
ered. No manure has been applied during the 
whole period, and although the land was previ¬ 
ously in low condition, the yield, as stated by 
Mr. Smith, has continued to increase from the 
first, and the average yield for the whole,time 
has been 36 buchels per acre. The soil has been 
deepened at each successive digging of the fallow, 
until instead of the five inches deep of wheat- 
producing land with which the experiment com¬ 
menced, the ground is now from 16 to 18- 
inches in depth. Thus the two great requisites 
of successful cultivation, increased yield and in¬ 
creasing fertility, have been attained. 
The discussion now going on about this sys¬ 
tem, is, whether it will repay the increased out¬ 
lay required for the labor of spading and hand 
cultivation. The accounts kept by Mr. Smith of 
the expenses and returns seem to demonstrate 
that the plan is remunerative there. But with 
the improvements now being introduced in im¬ 
plements for breaking up and stirring the soil, 
this objection can not long be urged. 
We notice this matter now more particularly 
to call attention to the effect of deep tillage in 
ameliorating the soil. The additional one or two 
inches of subsoil brought to the surface each year 
and exposed to the action of frost, sun, rain, dew, 
and air, in the instance just related, were equiva¬ 
lent to a dressing of manure sufficient for the 
wants of the growing crops, and added to the 
real fertility of the soil. The advocates of the 
system even maintain that by thus exposing the 
soil in fallow year by year, enough of the essen¬ 
tial constituents of plants will be gathered from 
the air, and evolved by decomposition of the min¬ 
eral deposits in the earth, to supply the wants of 
the wheat crop for any number of years. This 
extreme theory however is not needed, even if 
it were true. The application of manure is as 
easy in the Lois Weedon, as in any other system 
of culture, and when a sufficient depth of soil is 
attained, the fertility can thus be readily kept up. 
To decide whether this mode of tillage shall be¬ 
come general, will require much more extended 
trial than it has yet received. Mr. Smith consid¬ 
ers it inapplicable to other than clayey soils. 
The attention awakened by his experience, has 
induced other trials. Much prejudice exists 
against it, and the whole subject will be thorough¬ 
ly discussed. If it should prove successful against 
the inevitable opposition to every novelty in 
cultivation, it will not require many years to 
reduce it to practice on this side the Atlantic. We 
shall note the progress of the movement, and 
make use of such facts presented as may seem 
applicable to our own wants. Several points al¬ 
ready developed are worthy more extended no¬ 
tice when space permits. 
The Old Story—Wheat and Chess. 
ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY-FIRST ANSWER. 
“ Will wheat turn to chess!” is a question we 
are tired of seeing. Since our first agricultural 
reading, the error of transmutation of seeds has 
been shown up again and again, until it would 
seem that every body must know better. Yet 
notwithstanding the volumes of writing, the large 
rewards offered for a single specimen of success¬ 
ful chess-growing from wheat seed, and the set¬ 
tlement of the question by the most extended ex¬ 
periments, scarcely a month passes but a letter 
brings the same old query, “Will wheat turn to 
chess!” The belief in this absurdity resembles 
the growth of couch or quack grass—run the plow 
ever so deeply through a patch of it, and hoe it 
ever so thoroughly, and after the first fine show¬ 
er, you may see the obnoxious young shoots start¬ 
ing from the soil, apparently a3 fresh as ever, and 
looking as innocent of harm as carefully sown 
timothy. There is but one way, however, to deal 
with weeds in the garden, or in men’s beliefs, to 
work against them as often as they appear, so we 
proceed to hoe out the chess once more. 
The plant is named by botanists, Bromus scca- 
linus. It is a species of grass having its own pe¬ 
culiar characteristics as much as timothy, red- 
top, blue grass or any other sort. One peculiar 
distinction which must forever separate it from 
the wheat family, is the growth of the seed in 
panicles, forming a loose irregular collection of 
heads, like the growth of oats ; whereas, the 
wheat plant bears its seed in a spike, each grain 
packed close to its fellow along a common stalk— 
so that when you find an ox with his two well 
defined curved horns, degenerating into a moose 
with horns resembling a branch of scrub oak, or 
when the sheep with its upper jaw destitute of 
front teeth transmutes into a worthless cur with 
a formidable row of incisors above and below, 
then, and not until then, may you expect the spike¬ 
bearing wheat become panicle-bearing chess. 
This pest of the field was undoubtedly intro¬ 
duced from Europe, where it has for centuries 
plagued the grain fields, and given rise to the 
same error that prevails here. There, however, 
belief in transmutation is much more fertile. The 
common people will assure you that wheat will 
change to rye, then to barley, then to bromus or 
chess, and finally to oats ! Why they should 
stop here, and not let it run the round of timothy, 
rye grass, and cat-tail, we can not understand any 
more than we can explain why superficial ob¬ 
servers in this country have never detected 
wheat transmuting to anything but chess. 
The fanners of this country a few years since 
had a costly proof that chess is produced from 
chess seed. It was introduced to public notice 
somewhat after the manner of the Honey Blade 
grass, under the name of Willard’s Bromus. By 
the aid of advertisements, “certificates” and 
“ recommendations,” a large quantity of seed was 
sold as high as four or five dollars per bushel. It 
was stipulated with the purchasers that none 
should be allowed to go to seed 1 This precau¬ 
tion did not avail, however, and the unfortunate 
buyers found they had paid handsomely for a 
weed rightly named “cheat”—it has cheated 
many a man out of a good crop of wheat. 
Fortunately it is an annual, and proper care for 
a few years to allow none to ripen the seed, or if 
any ripens to separate it from grain, will eradi¬ 
cate it. It will take many years perhaps to fully 
extirpate it, for seeds already sown may remain 
dormant a longtime, and spring up when the sea¬ 
son, or the cultivation favors their development. 
When the seeds are all destroyed, the error of 
their originating from wheat, will also be obliter 
ated. 
A Cheap Source of Manure—A Capital 
way to get rid of House Slops. 
Among other improvements made on our prem¬ 
ises this season, there is nothing that pleases us 
more than the plan adopted for disposing of 
“ house slops,” and we can recommend the ar¬ 
rangement in the strongest terms. As will be 
seen by the plan of our barn, on page 236, the 
manure cellar is partly under the barn, and part¬ 
ly on the outside. From the outside division, at 
2 feet from the bottom, a glazed earthen-ware 
pipe extends 213 feet to the house. The pipe is 
6 inches inside diameter, in 2-feet joints or pieces 
fitting into each other, the joinings being closed 
with hydraulic cement. A curve, not quite a right 
angle, was required at a distance of 40 feet from 
the barn, to turn the pipe in the direction of the 
house at a point where it could pass between 
trees already planted. At (he house the pipe is 
2 feet below the surface, and at the barn 4) feet 
below, which, with a fall in the ground of nearly 
3 feet, gives a total fall of about 70 inches, or 1 
inch in 3 feet. This proves to he amply sufficient, 
| as the water runs freely. At the house end, an 
