AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
$)mgttrir ta imjxflfa tfte Jfrater, tjjt patter, an^r \\z <®arftmr* 
AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, THE MOST USEFUL, ANB THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF JUAN.-i Washington. 
CONDUCTING EDITOR, PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 
ORANGE JUDD, A. M. ALLEN & CO., 189 Water-st„ New-York. 
VOL. XIV.— NO. 6.] NEW-YORK, THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 1855. [NEW SERIES.—NO. 84. 
Jor prospectus, (Herms, &T., 
E^SEE LAST PAGE.^gl 
g@?“ Every one writing to the Editor or 
Publishers of this journal will please read 
“ Special Notices," on last page. 
8@“ All letters relating to Editorial mat¬ 
ters should be addressed to Mr. Orange 
Judd, (the Conducting Editor). 
Letters inclosing subscriptions and on oth¬ 
er business should be directed to Allen & 
Co., Publishers, and also those referring to 
both departments. Editorial and business 
matters, if in the same letter, should be on 
separate sheets. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
NEW IDEAS IN WHEAT GROWING. 
A portion of Grand Island, in the Niagara 
River, on the west or Canada side, is a stiff, 
clay, limestone soil—good for wheat. A 
small farmer there sowed, about 1st of Sep¬ 
tember, 1852, four and three-quarter acres 
white flint wheat. In August of the succeed¬ 
ing year (1853) he cut the piece, and from 
its product carried 184} bushels—60 lbs. to 
the bushel—merchantable wheat to the mills 
at Black Rock, and had left 50 bushels of 
tailings or screenings—that is, broken wheat 
and chess—making say 234 bushels of pro¬ 
duct, equal to a fraction over 44 bushels to 
the acre. 
Now, this product is not much to boast of 
in good wheat land, but what follows is some¬ 
what remarkable. The land on which this 
wheat grew is an old clearing, and had been 
skimmed over by squatters for perhaps thirty 
years, and had yielded various crops of 
wheat, oats, potatoes, grass, &c., after as 
poor a fashion of shiftless and lazy cultiva¬ 
tion as need be. The man who raised this 
crop of wheat was a slip-shod sort of faimer. 
He can neither read nor write—of course is 
no book-farmer. He plowed the land the 
first time in June, about two inches deep, in 
furrows eight inches wide. At the second 
plowing, in August, he plowed it two inches 
deeper, making the whole depth four inches. 
The wheat was harrowed in in the usual 
way, with about six pecks of seed to the 
acre, after the “Canadian fashion” opposite, 
to which he was brought up. 
The land in Canada, from the mouth of 
Lake Erie, along the frontier, to Lake On¬ 
tario, is mostly of the same kind of soil. It 
has been cultivated for seventy years past 
with wheat, barley, oats and grass. But lit¬ 
tle manure has been used, and that from the 
barn-yard ; and the farmers get good aver¬ 
age wheat crops with such plowing and cul¬ 
tivation ; and they insist upon it that deeper 
plowing—for they have tried it—does not 
answer so well, nor give them so good crops. 
Can this be so 1 or was this a chance crop 1 
Summer fallowing for wheat is the usual 
course of wheat raising along the frontier. 
As this is contrary to the modern theory 
of deep plowing and thorough tillage, will 
you give me a solution for the superiority of 
this mode of whe.it culture. M. 
The above was doubtless a “chance crop.” 
The land along the Niagara River, on either 
side, runs through every variety, from a 
very stiff clay to an easily-worked clay loam. 
There are few spots of sandy loam in that 
vicinity. But though the rocks a in place" are 
limestone, the soil can not be called a lime¬ 
stone soil. Both this and the loose stones 
mingled with it, are of a very different char¬ 
acter from the underlying rock. This soil, 
sometimes a few inches, and often many 
feet in thickness, has every appearance of 
having been deposited upon the surface of 
the rock, at some former period. So free is 
it from lime, that we have seen this sub¬ 
stance applied with great advantage upon a 
soil in Niagara County, where solid lime¬ 
stone rock came up to within a few inches 
of the surface. The gravel and large stones 
mingled with the soil are all smoothed and 
rounded, like the pebbles upon the lake or 
sea shore. Our impression is, that this soil 
was originally washed by strong currents of 
water, from what is now the north shore of 
Lake Ontario, though we may be in error in 
this particular. 
There is, in many localities, a species of 
encrinitic limestone—solid masses of petri¬ 
fied animal remains—diffused through the 
soil, and wherever this is found the soil is 
naturally fertile. Much of the land referred 
to by our correspondent contains all the 
mineral elements necessary to fertility, and 
in a finely divided state, just fitted for giv¬ 
ing a good root-hold to plants. Where the 
underlying rock comes near the surface, 
with no intervening bed of impervious clay 
to prevent natural drainage, the soil is in a 
most admirable condition for cultivation. 
But this is seldom the case. The county 
is comparatively level, and where the sur¬ 
face soil is a loam, there is generally a bed 
of clay just below, which prevents the water 
from sinking downward. The soil also 
abounds in salts of iron, which exist in a 
poisonous form—green vitriol (sulphate of 
iron)—where there is not a free access of 
air. Clay soils, or those lying upon clay, on 
account of the constant presence of water, 
and the consequent exclusion of air, except 
in two or three inches of the surface, are 
charged with this sulphate of iron, and the 
first attempt at deep plowing is unsuccessful, 
because this poisonous matter is thrown 
upon the surface. The better plan is, first 
use the subsoil plow to stir and admit the 
air into the lower soil, without bringing it. 
up in contact with the plants ; or plovv only 
an inch or two deeper every year, and bring 
up at each time a small quantity of the poi¬ 
sonous matter to the action of the air and 
frost, but not enough of it to injure the grow¬ 
ing crop. Such lands are benefitted greatly 
by deep plowing in autumn, and leaving them 
m high, narrow ridges, exposed to the united 
action of air and frost during winter. By 
these means, put in good condition to a depth 
of ten or twelve inches, such a soil as bore 
the above “ chance crop,” and you may cal¬ 
culate upon a certain crop, we will hardly 
venture to predict how large. 
We have not hinted at the great benefit to 
be derived from draining such land, and will 
only say that, from personal observation, we 
are confident the farms within 15 miles of 
Niagara Falls would, on the average, be 
more than doubled in actual value for culti¬ 
vation, by a system of thorough draining. 
Those rich lands yielding a “living” with 
the present “ shallow,” “ skinning,” “ slip¬ 
shod ” processes of cultivation, would, under 
a more intelligent system of deep, thorough 
tillage, be a source of wealth to the skillful 
cultivator, far more certain and remunerat¬ 
ive than the placers of California. 
THE ORANGE MELON. 
We are indebted to Mr. C. A. Peabody, 
for pure seeds of this water-melon. We re¬ 
ceived seeds last season from another source, 
and were di-appointed in the products. They 
were undoubtedly hybrid, as the seeds are 
not of the same color or size as the genuine. 
The peeling qualities which we looked for 
were very poorly developed, and the fruit 
was very small. Mr. Peabody says “ this 
melon is cultivated like the common kinds, 
but should not be planted near any of the 
melon tribe, as the pollen will mix to destroy 
its peeling qualities. When ripe, the skin 
peels off like an orange, and it may be sepa¬ 
rated between the lobes, without showing a 
seed. It is not only a great curiosity, but 
the most delicions melon ever met with.” 
The hybrids we raised were sweeter than 
any upon our premises. With the genuine 
seed, we expect to come up to the full stand¬ 
ard of excellence. 
