AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
999 
is apparently well founded, viz: that it furnishes 
sulphur to leguminous plants, in which case it 
acts as plant-food. It is certain that it ben¬ 
efits clover, (a leguminous plant,) more than 
it does cereal grams or grasses. But there are 
other facts connected with the action of plaster, 
which can not as yet be explained by science. 
As a general rule, on low, alluvial lands, or 
those abounding in vegetable mould, gypsum is 
less effective than on dry, sandy, gravelly soils, 
or even clay lands lacking vegetable matter. 
On the latter, its effects are sometimes sur¬ 
prising, almost doubling the crops. Much is 
said about the best time for sowing gypsum. 
Whenever sown, it will not be lost; and if ap¬ 
plied plentifully, it will last two or three years. 
But experience shows it to be specially advan¬ 
tageous if spread just before plowing. Sow it 
from the tail of a wagon, using from two to four 
bushels per acre, according to the state of the 
soil. A little observation, from year to year, 
will show when the land is plentifully supplied 
with plaster, or when it appears to lose its pow¬ 
er of benefiting crops. Indeed, it is only by ac¬ 
tual trial that we can certainly knpw that 
plaster will be useful on any particular soil. 
Another and very important use of gypsum 
is as a deodorizer and fixer of ammonia in sta¬ 
bles, privies, drains, composts, and like places. 
It prevents the waste of ammonia, and serves 
to purify many a place which would otherwise 
be foul and unwholesome. Whenever the ma¬ 
nure-heap begins to ferment, let plaster go into 
it. Whenever a stench rises from stable-floor 
or barn-yard, let plaster be applied. And when¬ 
ever that important building, (the compost 
heap,) goes up, let plaster go into the structure, 
at the rate of a tun of plaster to a hundred 
loads of crude manure. There is little danger 
that gypsum will not generally make good re¬ 
port of itself. 
A Hint Touching Manure. 
Why do we manure land at all ? The majori¬ 
ty of soils, as originally constituted, contain all 
the needful elements of vegetation. Go into a 
forest: see how the venerable trees shoot up 
grand and tall; how the vines and under-brush 
and plants grow in wanton luxuriance. Any 
need of the dung cart here ? Go out upon the 
Western prairies, or along the meadows and un¬ 
exhausted river bottoms of the East. You can 
run your staff down many a foot through soil 
teeming with food for plants. Pray, what need 
again, of the odorous cart ? No need, certainly, 
here or elsewhere, unless to bring back some¬ 
thing which thieving man may have stolen. 
Cut down an old orchard, and plant a new 
one on the same site: why do not the hand¬ 
some little saplings thrive ? Because the old or¬ 
chard has exhausted the land of much of the 
food which orchards require. No wonder the 
young trees look so wretched; they are starved. 
Crop a piece of wheat land, year after year, 
without returning in kind what is taken off, and 
the land will assuredly run out. But if the 
straw is spread on the land to rot, and if ammo¬ 
nia or other manures, equivalent to what the 
grain takes away, be restored to the land, it may 
and will continue productive for an indefinite 
period. The prairies have grown fertile by the 
annual decay of their own grasses. The forests 
grow rich by husbanding the products of the soil. 
This, then, is my simple hint. If the land is 
poor, it must be brought up to a productive 
state, by manures adapted to its wants. If^t is 
rich, we can maintain its fertility only by re¬ 
storing to it in kind and measure as we take 
from it. This, as we understand it, is all “ the 
philosophy and the mystery” of manure, ex¬ 
cept as it changes the mechanical condition of 
the soil. Let us never imagine that we can rob 
ourselves without loss. * 
Grazing as a Specialty—A Field for 
“Gentlemen Farmers.” 
The varied husbandry of the olden times, 
when markets were few and far between, is fast 
giving place, in the older States, to particular 
branches of farming. The division of labor 
which is carried out so completely upon the 
large estates of England, is beginning to be un¬ 
derstood among us. The system has very great 
advantages and some evils to counterbalance. 
If we looked at pecuniary results alone, a single 
branch of farming can be made more profitable 
than a dozen different branches upon the same 
farm. It calls for less capital, and much less 
skill. On the other hand, a varied husbandry 
sharpens the faculties, and trains a more intelli¬ 
gent class of farmers. They form a practical ac¬ 
quaintance with a much larger class of objects, 
and are compelled by the daily necessities of 
business to a much wider range of thought. 
The extent to which the old routine farming 
has been invaded by new ideas, is hardly sus¬ 
pected by farmers whose journeyings are con¬ 
fined to monthly trips to the nearest market 
town. In the vicinity of our cities and the rail¬ 
roads that lead to them, we have a large class of 
market farms, milk farms, and grazing farms. 
One raises vegetables for the city, another milk, 
another beef, another hay, and so on, relying 
upon some one article for all his income. 
One of the safest and least troublesome of all 
these specialties, is the grazing of cattle for the 
New-York market as pursued in Putnam county, 
in this State, and the adjoining region in Con¬ 
necticut. There are some peculiarities in the 
mode of grazing in this region, that we have 
never met with elsewhere. The cattle are not 
raised upon the farms where this method is fol¬ 
lowed. It is found upon experiment that hay fed 
to stock cattle during the Winter, will not bring 
more than five dollars a tun. Of course the rais¬ 
ing of cattle can only be made profitable, in dis¬ 
tricts remote from large markets, where grass 
and hay are very cheap. The grazing farmer 
relies entirely upon purchased cattle for his 
stock. He buys in the Spring, about the time 
grass starts or a little earlier, western cattle, gen¬ 
erally grade Short Horns, three or four years old, 
already in good condition, or second rate beef 
cattle. Sometimes stall-fed animals are pur¬ 
chased, when the market is over-stbclted, and 
they can be got low enough. If the season is 
i too early for grass, they are put upon the farm 
I and fed with good hay until the grass starts, 
though this is an exception to the general practice. 
The cattle are divided into herds adapted to the 
size of the pastures and have no change until 
they are ripe for the butcher. It is found that 
a change even from good feed to better affects 
the cattle unfavorably, often scouring them and 
hindering their thrift. They are occasionally 
salted, and with this exception have no care 
from the owner. They are brought into the 
! highest condition upon nothing but grass. Some 
of the best beef sold in our market is made 
in this way. The meat has a mottled appear¬ 
ance, little specks and streaks of fat, running 
through the whole mass of lean. Sales are 
made from the herds at any time during the lat¬ 
ter part of the season when prices suit. The 
cattle are taken from the pastures early in Oc¬ 
tober to give the grass a chance to make a thick 
mat to cover the ground during the Winter. 
We recently visited a farm where this system 
had been pursued for neatly twenty years. The 
results were satisfactory both in regard to the 
pocket of the owner, and to the improvement 
of the land. He has a thorough knowledge of 
cattle, and watches the market closely, and his 
profits are of course somewhat increased by his 
skill in making purchases and sales. He buys 
in Albany or New-York, as suits his interest, 
generally for 7 to 8 cents per lb., net weight, ac¬ 
cording to quality. He has a standing offer 
for his cattle of ten cents a pound, the butcher 
taking them when it suits his convenience. It 
is found that the bullocks gain, in a season of 
six months, from two to four hundred pounds, 
in rare cases five hundred. If a bullock weigh 
twelve hundred dressed, he gets an advance of 
say two cents a pound on the purchase price, 
equal to %bout nineteen dollars, and a gain in 
the woiglit of the animal of say two hundred and 
fifty pounds, worth twenty-five dollars. This 
would be an advance of forty-four dollars upon 
the largest sized bullocks. The farm has car¬ 
ried a hundred head of these cattle, and some 
of the best pastures feed a bullock to the acre, 
but allowing two acres to the bullock, it would 
give a net gain of twenty-two dollars to the 
acre, which must be considered pretty good farm¬ 
ing for this country. 
The first impression is, that such pastures 
could have been made only by abundant ma¬ 
nuring and thorough tillage, and that they must 
run down under such cropping. But we were 
informed that the yield of these pastures is 
more than double the yield of thirty years ago, 
under the common system of manuring and 
cropping. We could well believe it, for where 
a large herd had been feeding all Summer, there 
was a thick mat of herdsgrass, red top, and 
white clover that would have yielded over a 
tun to the acre. We never saw finer pastures. 
The only manuring practised, beside the drop¬ 
pings of the cattle, is an annual dressing of 
plaster, about two bushels to the acre. This 
keeps the land constantly improving. 
It will be seen that this system of grazing fat 
cattle has some advantages over that of grazing 
young cattle and cows, as it returns to the land 
nearly everything that it produces. In raising 
young animals, all the bones and carcass are 
raised out of the soil and sold off. The four year 
old bullock has his bones already made, and his 
flesh in good condition. He only draws upon 
the land for a little more bone earth, and the 
mineral constituents of two or three hundred 
pounds of beef. Whatever the philosophy of 
the fact, the result can not be doubted, viz., a 
constantly improving soil, under this system. 
It makes a very easy and genteel kind of farm 
mg, giving a fair return for capital, and affording 
a good deal of leisure to the owner. The hard 
work of haying and tillage is avoided in Sum¬ 
mer and the care of cattle in Winter. Very lit¬ 
tle labor also is required. No tillage is required 
except for crops consumed in the family. 
The great draw back to it is, that it requires 
a much larger capital than most farmers have at 
command. The fatting cattle upon this farm did 
not cost less than six thousand dollars. Sever¬ 
al thousand dollars must be handled every 
Spring and Fall in order to carry on a grazing- 
farm to advantage. It presents an inviting field 
of labor for gentlemen of large capital, who en¬ 
joy country life, but who do not quite relish the 
hard work, close confinement, and careful atten¬ 
tion usually demanded by a varied husbandry. 
