52 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
December 18, when it weighed 17 cwt. 3 qrs. 
18 lbs. The general results were these : 
When on Grass, it gained in 13 weeks 228 
lbs., being rather more thanl71bs. per week; 
on turnips and meal, in six weeks it gained 
102 lbs., being about 17 lbs. per week ; and 
on Mangold and meal, in seven weeks 178 
lbs., being about 25 lbs. per week. 
Agricultural Gazette. 
A DISPUTE ABOUT IT. 
“ Book Farming won't pay." How do you 
know that 1 ? Have you tried it yourself and 
failed in it, or do you spit out a prejudice for 
for which you have no particular reason l 
What do you mean by “ book farming?” Do 
you intend to say that because knowledge is 
put in print, it is no longer good for anything? 
If you learn a thing from a book, is it there¬ 
fore of less value than if you received it 
from your neighbor? If your boys have 
been at school and have learned anything, it 
has been from books ; those who learn the 
news, do it from newspapers. What is 
there about farming that its truths cannot be 
printed? If one man fats his pig in half the 
time his neighbor does and gets him twice 
as fat, cannot that be printed and still be 
true ? And could not a third man who reads 
it look into the matter and learn howto do it ? 
Is farming perfect? and if not, how is it to 
be made better ? 
Book farming will pay. It has paid; it 
does pay and it is going on still to pay. It 
may not pay you. You may be too stupid 
or too prejudiced, or too contrary to profit 
by any other man’s experience. Or you may 
be a man of good judgment, so as to be in¬ 
dependent of other men’s opinions or prac¬ 
tices, and though not learning much from 
books, may learn from observation and re¬ 
flection. If this is true, you ought to give 
your experience to others. 
Book farming will pay. The stock men 
of England have made themselves rich, and 
their names known all over the world, by 
book education put to practice. As much 
as agriculture is better and more sound and 
remunerative, and honored now in this 
country than it was thirty years ago, it has 
been made so by books. It will pay the man 
who will think, and who has sense enough to 
separate that which is reasonable, and appli¬ 
cable to his circumstances from that which 
is mere theory and “ bosh.” A man who be¬ 
lieves all he hears is a tool; so is he who 
trusts implicitly all he reads. Books are not 
invented to take the place of sense and 
judgment; they are to aid and instruct 
them. 
“ My Father and. Grandfather farmed with¬ 
out these neiv lights." So they did. They 
rode on horseback and in coaches instead of 
a rail car. They paid 25 cents a letter for 
postage; they didn’t write by lightning. 
They cut wood with shear-steel axes ; 
pitched hay with wrought iron forks ; cut 
their rye with sickles ; mowed with English 
scythes ; and plowed with a strap iron piow. 
They fed hogs to 200 pounds, and thought 
that something to brag about.; and crowed 
lustily over a five hundred pound steer. 
Father and Grandfather were good men, and 
knew some things betterthan their boys do; 
but their boys know some things which they 
didn’t, and he would be a sap-head who 
should merely act their lives over again. In 
our day we are expected to act according to 
our circumstances, and not according to 
theirs. Had Father and Grandfather known 
what you do or may know, they would not 
have acted as you do ; for their acts would 
have befitted their times. 
“ What do those city fellows know ?” Not 
much, perhaps. They only claim to know 
what they have learned ; and any man has a 
right to do that. What they have learned 
has been in the country where you are. 
They still seek to be instructed by you that 
they may scattered it abroad for others. 
Do not disappoint them by withholding your 
stock of knowledge.— Rrarie Farmer. 
HEN MANURE FOR CORN. 
Having been frequently solicited by' some 
of your readers to send you the result of an 
experiment testing the value of hen manure 
for corn, I send you the facts, in the hope 
that they may be useful to others. In 1852 
I planted but two acres of corn, and having 
so little, desired to make it as good as pos¬ 
sible without the use of barnyard manure. 
After flitting the ground and marking it for 
planting, I scraped out my hen house and 
got about eight bushels of dry hen manure, 
of which I dropped a small handful where 
each hill was to be planted. There was 
only enough to dress thirty rows, six rows 
being undressed. The com was planted on 
the 18th of May—dropped on the manure and 
then covered. 
On the 1st day of June the six rows unma¬ 
nured was nicely’- up, and large enough to be 
seen to cultivate ; but of the manured part 
not one hill out of one hundred was up. On 
examination I found the corn rotten, I sup¬ 
pose from the corroding effects of the ma¬ 
nure. June 2d 1 replanted the manured 
part, taking pains to put the seed close by 
the side of the first planting. The seed 
came up and grew finely, so that byr the 1st 
of July it was fully as large, and of much 
better color, than the part unmanured. In 
all other respects the whole field was managed 
alike, being ashed, plastered and hoed at the 
same time. 
Wlien the corn was cut, each part was 
stooked by itself, making six rows of corn 
each, from the manured part, and one row 
of stooks, containing six rows of corn, from 
the unmanured part. I hired the corn husked 
by the bushel, so that it became necessary' 
to measure it. From each row of stooks of 
the manured part I obtained thirty-six bush¬ 
els of ears of sound corn ; from the unma¬ 
nured part I had but twenty-nine bushels, 
and of not as good quality. The difference 
in favor of the manured was seven bushels 
more from five rows of corn than from six 
rows unmanured. From the above experi¬ 
ment I conclude, had the whole been ma¬ 
nured, I should have received 259] bushels 
ears ; if none had been manured, I should 
have received but 174 bushels—making a 
difference of 85] bushels for the manure, 
amounting, at 25 cents per bushel for corn 
in the ear, to $21 30, or $10 65 per acre. 
Whether the above difference is wholly to 
be attributed to the manure, I am not pre¬ 
pared to say. About the 10th of June we 
had a severe hail storm, beating and bruising 
the first planting to the ground, while the 
replanted corn was scarcely up. I have 
since used hen manure for corn, but have 
not correctly ascertained the result. I am 
satisfied that it is one of the most valuable 
applications that can be used for corn.—G., 
in Rural New-Yorker. 
Henrietta, Feb. 12, 1855. 
Joseph Remy, the poor fisherman of the 
Vosges, recently died at Bresse from a dis 
ease brought on by exposure to inclement 
weather in his researches on the artificial 
production of fish. A pension of 1,200 
francs had been awarded him for his labors 
in this interesting branch of ichthyology. 
His son, Laurent Remy, is azealous disciple 
of his father, and has exhibited so much skill 
in the art of pisciculture as to have been en¬ 
trusted by Government with the duty of keep¬ 
ing the waters in the Department of the Loire 
stocked with fish. This business has be¬ 
come a recognized feature in the list of ali¬ 
mentary productions in France; for it has 
been found that, without the aid of artificial 
production, the stock of fresh water fish 
would soon be exhausted. 
POULTRY MANURE. 
The horticulturist can not value too highly 
the droppings of poultry. For the past two 
or three years l have tested fully its proper¬ 
ties, and feel satisfied that one bushel of 
poultry manure mixed with plaster, and used 
as a top dressing, is equivalent to ten bush¬ 
els of stable manure put into the ground in 
the usual manner. It is particularly valua¬ 
ble for onion sets, as well as for almost 
every other garden vegetable. My'process 
for its use is this—I dig and plant my seed, 
and in the course of a few days, or about the 
time I think the seed is begining to germi¬ 
nate, I take the manure, previously mixed 
with a small portion of plaster and put upon 
the hills or beds containing the seed. By 
the time the shoots come up the manure is 
in a proper state for working, it having de¬ 
composed by losing much of its ammonia, 
and I find it requires less labor to keep the 
ground loose than when not used, to say r 
nothing of its effects upon vegetation, which 
are incalculable. The season for saving this 
manure is now at hand, and I feel satisfied 
that if once tried will never be abandoned, if 
the manure can be had. 
I might also say in this connection that in 
consequence of the attacks of the striped bug 
upon the cucumber plant, it has become 
almost an impossibility to cultivate that 
much admired vegetable. By the use of 
air slacked lime, sprinkled every few days 
over the plant, their ravages may be checked, 
and the horticulturist find no difficulty in 
raising any quantity of the vegetable. The 
same remedy will apply to pumpkin and 
squash vines.' ' P. 
Muncv, Pa., Feb. 20, 1855. 
THE NEW SUGAR PLANT. 
The scarcity of corn in France lias drawn 
attention to a new plant, recently introduced 
from China, which promises to supersede to 
a certain extent the use of beetroot in the 
manufacture of sugar and the distillation of 
alcohol. The Agricultural Committee of 
Toulon has recently addressed a report to ihe 
Minister of War, with respect to the uses of 
the plant in question. It is called the sotglio, 
or liolcus saccharatus, and was first intro¬ 
duced into France in 1851, by M. de Montigny, 
the French Consul in China, who sent 
some grains of the seed to the Government. 
Since then the culture of the plant has been 
commenced with success in Provence, and 
promises to be of great advantage to Algeria. 
The sorgho has been called the “ sugar-cane 
of the North of China,” and numerous ex¬ 
periments have recently been tried, with a 
view to ascertaining if it possesses the pro¬ 
perties necessary for producing a crystal- 
lizable syrup, so as to become a rival to 
sugar-cane and beetroot. According to the 
report of the Toulon Agricultural Associa¬ 
tion, it would appear to have those proper¬ 
ties. The fact has been ascertained by a 
series of experiments made in the depart¬ 
ment of the~Var. It also appears to be richer 
in the saccharine principle than any known 
plant excepting the vine. Beetroot contains 
from 8 to 10 per cent of sugar ; the sorgho 
produced from 16 to 20 percent, from which 
8 to 10 per cent of pure alcohol, fit for all 
industrial and domestic purposes, can be 
produced. The refuse is excellent food for 
cattle, who are very fond of it. The plant 
grows with great rapidity, and does not re¬ 
quire irrigation. The sorgho is not. a new 
