4 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
lect. Other advantages will follow. The 
promised land lies before you. It is your 
inheritance. Improve it by your industry, 
and embellish it by your intelligence and 
taste ; and then the power and glory of our 
Republic will rest upon its true foundation— 
the fertility of its broad lands, and prosperi¬ 
ty and virtue of its hardy yeomanry. 
MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 
SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 
Through the kindness of the Secretary we 
have recieved a copy of the above Report for 
1854. We believe no other Society issues 
their annual report with so much promptness. 
We have before alluded to the indefatigable 
energy of the very efficient Secretary. We 
are also free to'say, that there is no other 
agricultural publication which we read 
with more interest, and real profit, than the 
one now before us. We think we can in no 
way benefit our readers at large, more than 
by giving them frequent extracts from this 
work, and we shall from time to time do so, 
as we have opportunity to examine and pre¬ 
pare them. We commence in this number 
with a valuable article on the 
CULTURE OF THE HOP. 
This subject is treated under several dis¬ 
tinct heads, giving its History, Location, Soil 
and Mode of Culture, Setting the Poles, Dry¬ 
ing, Bailing and Bagging, Cost and Profit of 
Raising, Diseases, and Uses. Omitting the 
History, we commence with the 
Location .—The land designed for a hop 
plantation should be as free from exposure to 
the winds as possible, since at certain sea¬ 
sons it is liable to be greatly injured. Level 
ground is better than a hillside. 
The hop is said by some to flourish best in 
a moist climate. The finest varieties are 
cultivated to the highest degree of perfec¬ 
tion in England, the climate of which we have 
already alluded to in a former part of this 
Report. And English writer affirms that the 
north of England and Scotland are too cold 
for the successful cultivation of these varie¬ 
ties of the hop, and suggeststhat if it is at all 
attempted on a large scale, or in field cul¬ 
ture, the coarse, hardy Flemish redbine be 
used. The latitude of Edinburgh is 55° 57’, 
that'of Boston 42® 21'. The mean annual tern 
perature of the former is 47°.1' F., that of 
the latter 48®9'—showing but a slight differ¬ 
ence. But a comparison of the mean spring 
and summer heat of the two places shows a 
very marked difference. Our winters are 
far colder, and our summers far hotter, than 
those of Scotland ; or, to resort to accurate 
statistics, the mean temperature of the grow¬ 
ing months for the two places is as follows : 
Edinburgh. 
degs. 
April.44.1 Fahr. 
May.50.3 “ 
June.50.0 “ 
July.58.7 “ 
August.56.8 “ 
September.53.4 “ 
October.48.8 “ 
Boston. 
degs. 
April.47.4 Fahr. 
May.56.5 
June. 66.2 
July.71,6 
August.69.4 
September.62.2 
October.51.5 
This shows a very marked difference in 
our favor, so far as requisite heat is con¬ 
cerned ; and on this point there seems to be 
no reason why we may not, by proper cultiva¬ 
tion, grow the finest varieties with complete 
success. It has been said that the plant is 
indigenous to our State. 
Soil and Mode of Culture .—The hop may 
be cultivated with success in a great variety 
of soils ; but it flourished best in a deep, rich, 
mellow loam, with a subsoil of medium stiff¬ 
ness. In general, it may be said that good 
corn land is good hop land. The soil of 
Wilmington, one of the first and largest 
towns engaged in hop growing, is generally 
of a poor and light description—a sandy 
loam; and it is worthy of remark, that the 
hops are better on soils which will raise 
only from a quarter to half a pound to a hill 
than on those which raise a pound or a 
pound and a half. 
The roots of the hop extend to great 
depths when the soil is of suitable character 
and properly prepared, and the best cultiva¬ 
tors take great pains to loosen and pulver¬ 
ize it thoroughly and to manure it well. The 
first plowing should be ten or twelve inches 
deep. The hop farmers of Kent and Surrey, 
among the most noted hop districts in Eng¬ 
land, first plow very deep, and plant with 
some cleansing crop, and then manure with 
twenty-five or thirty loads of good barn¬ 
yard manure per acre. The land is then 
frequently sown with turnips, when sheep 
are folded upon it in the early part of win¬ 
ter ; after which it is deeply trenched and 
thrown into ridges, to lie, during the rest of 
the winter, exposed to the frosts and air. 
The trenchng is done with the spade, two 
spits deep, in the most thorough manner; 
but a more economical method is by the 
trench plow, or by the Michigan sod and sub 
soil plow. 
The hop is commonly propagated from 
cuttings, and sometimes by young plants 
grown from the seed. The cuttings may be 
taken fresh from the crown of the long roots, 
and planted directly in land previously pre¬ 
pared for them ; or they may be rooted after 
the manner of layers, and then planted; or 
the fresh cuttings may be rooted in a bed, 
and transplanted from that to the place in¬ 
tended for them. . Cuttings which have been 
rooted generally grow more rapidly and ar¬ 
rive at maturity earlier than fresh cuttings, 
which gives them an advantage. 
When shoots are to be used as layers they 
may be twisted at the joint above which they 
are to be buried in soil, and bent down and fas¬ 
tened, and then covered up. This is usually 
done in a careless manner at the first hoeing, 
the loose, straggling vines being buried up 
without any particular regard to depth or 
neatness ; and when the vines are covered 
in this manner, they are not long in taking 
root. As soon as they have taken root, they 
may be cut from the parent stalk and trans¬ 
planted into the ground prepared for them, 
each slip being six or eight inches long, and 
having three or four eyes, or joints. When 
it is designed to treat the cuttings in the nur¬ 
sery bed, they are taken from the crown of 
the root or from the stalk of old plants at the 
time of dressing in spring, which will be 
hereafter mentioned, and allowed to remain 
in the bed till they are well rooted. The 
cuttings are made about eight inches long ; 
and if they contain more than four buds or 
joints, they are trimmed. Care should be 
taken to allow only one male plant to a field, 
and it may be set by the side of the road at 
considerable distance from the field and left 
to take care of itself. This caution can not 
be too strictly observed; for our hops have 
deteriorated from too much seeding, which 
has arisen from allowing the male plants to in¬ 
crease. Some allow one male plant to fifty, 
and set it in the field with the rest. This is 
too much; for, where hops are over-seeded, 
they ripen prematurely, and turn brown so 
fast as not to give time to pick them in the 
proper state of maturity. If any male plants 
are allowed to stand in the field, one hill to 
five acres is enough, and care should be 
taken to prevent them from multiplying. 
(To be Continued.) 
It is chiefly young ladies of narrow un¬ 
derstanding who wear shoes too small for 
them. 
WHAT SHOULD BE THE CHIEF CROPS OF THE 
SOUTH. 
Corn and cotton in the cotton planting 
States have, by common custom, become the 
universal crops of extensive cultivation. 
How far this shift is correct, is not entirely 
proved by its universality, nor by the preju¬ 
dices which sustain it in the minds of plant¬ 
ers. Indian corn, indigenous to the soil, was 
perhaps the most convenient and profitable 
when the country was first settled, and when 
an abundant and easily prepared crop, to 
supply the wants of both man and beast, was 
a requirement of the times. In this relative 
value, it still is the most valuable crop grown 
on the virgin soils of the Middle and South¬ 
ern of the Western States, for it luxuriates 
upon the vegetable matter abounding in new 
soil, and with little preparation and indifferent 
culture, yields large returns for labor be¬ 
stowed. Such, however, is not the case in 
the older States, where the cream of the 
land has been stolen away imperceptibly by 
the most exhausting system to which tilled 
soil has ever been subjected ; and taking ten 
years’ cropping together, the Indian corn 
crop is the most uncertain we can plant. It 
is difficult to grow on any but virgin or allu¬ 
vial soil, and drouths of summer, except in 
extraordinary and most favorable seasons, 
cut it off to ruinous extent. The corn-crib 
is called the store-house of the planter in the 
South, and indeed it is his main depend¬ 
ence. But this is only because he is not ac¬ 
customed to interweave other crops with the 
cultivation of cotton. On improved and 
well prepared soil, barley and wheat would 
yield more bushels of grain of more value 
to the planter than Indian corn. In fact, bar¬ 
ley is the most valuable grain which we cul¬ 
tivate at the South. If sown at the proper 
season, it readily perfects itself from the 
winter moisture in the earth, and yields 
heavily. It is fine soiling for all kinds of 
stock, and comes into harvest in May, a time 
when a few days can be spared from the cot¬ 
ton crop without detriment to its growth or 
production. Its grain is so well protected, 
that it is not liable to be spoiled by exposure 
to the weather, and it may lie any length of 
time in the straw, when drily housed, with¬ 
out being injured. A barley crop sown with 
guano, cotton seed, or well prepared compost 
manure, after the cotton crop is gathered in 
December and January, would come off suf¬ 
ficiently early to sow the stubble down in 
peas to be turned under in autumn, and the 
rotation of small grain with this system pur¬ 
sued, would be the best and most efficient 
mode of improving our lands. It would al¬ 
so be fitted to the economical and easy cul¬ 
tivation of the after cotton crop, by the 
plowing under of the herbage in the fall, 
which would thoroughly be decomposed by 
the next spring. 
Barley, ground and mixed with straw, re¬ 
duced to chaff by a cutting machine, is bet¬ 
ter food for horses and cattle than any pre¬ 
paration of Indian corn, and to those persons 
who have not mills, simply soaking the grain 
in water is a fine preparation for feeding to 
horses. Swine fatten and keep in condition 
more easily on barley than on corn. As a 
conclusive argument in its favor, more bar¬ 
ley can be cheaply grown on an acre of im¬ 
proved dry upland, than we can grow of 
corn. Wheat, sown with guano in like 
manner after the cotton crop, would 
come in at a season when the harvesting 
could be attended to without detriment, and 
after the cotton crop is laid by, and in the 
interval between that time and the compience- 
ment of picking, the threshing and preparing 
it for market or the mill, could be attended 
to without hindrance. The middlings, shorts 
and bran of a large wheat crop, all mixed to¬ 
gether, would go far to feed the plantation 
