AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
83 
separate inclosing of each field, or each farm, 
compared to dispensing with either or both; 
and instead, confining live stock to inclosed 
pastures, or herding them, especially in re¬ 
ference to hogs. 
VII. Grass, husbandry, grazing, and green or vegeta¬ 
ble manuring crops. 
1. Natural meadows on moist ground. 
2. Artificial (or sown) grasses on perma¬ 
nent meadows or pastures. 
3. Artificial grasses, peas, or other green 
or forage crops, alternated with tillage crops 
on arable land. 
4. Mowing and hay. 
5. Crops of grass, peas, or weeds, left, to 
manure the land on which they grew. 
VIII. Live stock. 
1. Teams, or animals for labor. 
2. Animals reared and kept for their pro¬ 
ducts, or fattened for sale or home consump¬ 
tion, and their management. 
3 Animals purchased from abroad, and 
general cost thereof. 
4. Comparative profits of hogs confined to 
inclosed pastures, or to styes, and those 
ranging at large. 
IX. Dairy management and products. 
1. Products consumed or sold. 
2. Supplies of butter and cheese from 
abroad. 
X. Manures. 
1. Cow-yard and stable manure, and other 
stock supplies Collection and choice of 
material—preparation, and effects. Ferment¬ 
ed and unfermented manures. 
2. Straw, leaves, or other unmixed vege 
table matters, unrotted when applied. 
3. Peat, marsh, or swamp mud as manure. 
4. Fossil shells or marl. 
5. Lime. 
6. Any supply of carbonate of lime from 
other sources. 
7. Wood ashes—coal ashes. 
8. Bone dust, or phosphate of lime in other 
materials. 
9. Gypsum. 
10. Guano. 
11. Any earth containing fertilizing ingre¬ 
dients, and fit for manures. 
12. Any other neutral salts, or materials 
containing them, useful for manuring. 
13. Composts of different manuring mate¬ 
rials. 
XI. Orchards and their products, vineyards, vegetable 
gardens supplying products for sale generally and exten¬ 
sively. 
XII. Woodland. 
1. General description of the growth of 
different kinds of lands. 
2. Uses and value of timber and other pro¬ 
ducts. 
3. Proportion of farms necessary to be 
kept under wood. 
4. Disadvantages and cost of excess of 
wood-land to agriculture. 
XIII. Old and bad pactices, and new or recently intro¬ 
duced processes or improved practices in agriculture. 
XIV. Notices or suggestions of new or neglected re¬ 
sources for agricultural improvement. 
XV. Obstacles to agricultural improvement and profit. 
1. Obstacles opposed by natural and una¬ 
voidable circumstances. 
2. Obstacles caused by erroneous govern¬ 
mental policy, or by omission of proper leg¬ 
islation. 
3. Obstacles caused by individual action 
or neglect. 
XVI. Unhealthiness of residents, caused by climate 
and condition of the country and its agriculture. 
1. Local sources of malaria, their extent, 
operation, and degrees of malignity—such as 
rapid streams sometimes overflowing the 
bordering land—tide-water marshes, fresh ©r 
salt—swamps, whether in their natural state 
or when undex culture—mill-ponds, and the 
passage of transient and irregular floods of 
fresh water over salt marshes. 
2. Accumulation of putrifying matters, an¬ 
imal ana vegetable, in towns, their injurious 
effects on health, and the means of render¬ 
ing them innoxious, and useful as materials 
for manure. 
3. increase or decrease, and greater or less 
extent and virulence of malarious diseases, 
in past time and now, and the supposed causes 
of change. 
4. Means ef removing or diminishing the 
causes of suclr diseases, within the reach of 
individual proprietors, and such means as 
can not be used without governmental inter¬ 
position, and compulsory direction. 
XVII. Any other subjects not here indicated, which 
may be connected with the agriculture or economy of the 
county or other locality treated of, and of which the dis¬ 
cussion would be useful in aid of improvement. 
AN AGRICULTURAL ARTICLE. 
We regret to see an article like the one 
below, in the editorial department of so 
widely circulating and influential a journal 
as the Tribune ; for it is alike injurious to 
the cultivators of the soil, and the consumers 
of their produce. There is many an“ old daisy 
field in Connecticut,” and elsewhere, upon 
which one hundred dollars’worth of labor and 
manure may be expended per acre, and yet 
it would not yield an average of ten bushels 
of wheat. So far from the cultivation of 
such lands being profitable, it would only re¬ 
sult in loss ; and we defy certain “scientific” 
farmers,however pretentious, to produce any 
other result. Thousands of acres of such 
lands are only fit to pasture a small hardy 
race of sheep, goats, ponies, and geese ; and 
it is to such purposes similar lands in Europe 
are devoted; although in a monied point of 
view they are far more valuable there than 
in Connecticut. 
The writer is almost as much out of the 
vray in his prices of potatoes, and beef, in 
this market, as in his calculation of the prof¬ 
its of cultivating a poor soil. Good Mercer and 
Nova Scotia potatoes, could have been pur¬ 
chased at this time for $4.25 per single bar¬ 
rel. Allow 2i bushel to the barrel, this 
would be $1.5^ per bushel, instead of $3.00— 
quite a difference. In the price given of beef, 
he makes a still greater mistake. 
The writer recommends sugar, rice, tapio¬ 
ca, as cheaper than flour and meat. We 
doubt this. Beans, peas, corn meal, and cod¬ 
fish certainly are, and more especially the 
two former—beans and peas—and the writer 
should know that sugar is not in large quan¬ 
tities adapted for summer food, for laboring 
men. 
It strikes us that our staid, steady, reason¬ 
ing farmers—for such many of the most un¬ 
scientific among them are—will be little af¬ 
fected, except to laughter—by such epithets 
as “ arrant nonsense,” “poor pitiful brain,” 
“ stupid ignorance.” We think this article 
must have crept in unobserved by the present 
intelligent conductors of the Tribune, and 
we only allude to it so as to call their atten¬ 
tion to the importance of watching carefully 
against the admission of unreliable articles, 
which will in the long run work against the 
cause they desire to advance. 
From the Daily Tribune, of April 13. 
It is arrant nonsense for any man in all 
I New-England to say that he can not raise 
grain; that his land is too poor. It is not 
half so poor as his poor pitiful brain that will 
not learn the cheap art of making poor land 
fertile. In all inventions, except that of mak¬ 
ing poor land productive, New-England is 
master of the world. In agriculture she is 
behind the Chinese, for they do save and 
apply manures. There is not an old daisy- 
field in all Connecticut that may not be 
made to produce wheat with more profit than 
usually arises upon the arable product of 
the West. The ground is there to hold the 
seed, and that is all that is wanted. Science 
points out the proper ingredients to apply to 
make the grain. Every dollar that is so ex¬ 
pended will pay back fifty per cent per an¬ 
num. It is the stupid ignorance of those 
who own the land that prevents the applica¬ 
tion, and produces starvation prices. We 
know this is strong language, but it is true. 
Strong language is needed to arouse stupor. 
We are at starvation prices now ; and, with¬ 
out one of the best crops ever grown in the 
United States, we shall be worse off next 
winter. 
The best flour is $13 50 a barrel. Pota¬ 
toes are $2 a bushel at wholesale ; at retail 
50 per cent higher. Who can afford to eat 
them? Last week the most common price 
of beef was 1G to 20 cents a pound, and choice 
steaks sold for 25 to 37£ cents a pound. 
The only cheap article of food is sugar, 
and that can be bought for a less price per 
pound than flour. It should be more largely 
consumed as a matter of economy. Let the 
poor eat more sugar, rice, tapioca, farina, 
maccoroni, hominy, dried fruits, and less 
meat, and much less crude vegetables. 
CHEESE PUMPKINS. 
The following experiment shows the great 
profit of raising a good crop of pumpkins. 
When intelligently raised, we have no doubt 
they are as profitable a crop as can occupy 
the fields, as they generally command a good 
pi ice in market, and when unsaleable there, 
they are an excellent food for almost all do¬ 
mestic animals. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
I have raised this year from a simple vine 
17 pumpkins of the cln ese shape variety, 
averaging 17 lbs. each. As there are 4,840 
square yards in an acre, and allowing 14 
square yards for each vine, which is more 
than the vine occupied, the vines being 
trimmed within these limits will give 1,302 
vines. This multiplied by 17 will give 5,134 
pumpkins; and these multiplied by 17, the 
weight of each pumpkin will give 87,278 lbs., 
which at half a cent a pound is $436,39. 
S. A. 
Sisal Hemp.—A correspondent of the Jour¬ 
nal of Commerce, under date of April 7, from 
Key West, says : 
Upon Knight’s and Duck Key we observe 
extensive fields of Sisal hemp. Several 
hundred thousand plants or suckers have 
been set out, and by their tall growth prove 
that our soil and climate are well adapted to 
the cultivation of this valuable plant. The 
hemp plant requires but little care. It is 
strong and thrifty, and will flourish upon a 
barren sand bank. It forces itself through 
the surrounding weeds and shrubs, and 
mounts high above them all. The fiber of 
many plants grown upon this Key exceeds 
8 feet in length. It is strong, of fine luster, 
and in color acreamy yellow. As this plant 
procures more nourishment from the air than 
from the earth, and needs only to be watered 
by the dews, it is well adapted to our Keys. 
We know of no other article that could be 
grown to a profit, and we look forward to 
