AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
115 
Horned cow among the milkmen in Lon¬ 
don. The best Durham oxen have thick, 
wide, fat backs, with a handsome frame, and 
plenty of lean flesh, with heavy thighs, and 
generally, when made fat, weigh all the 
weights they are laid at; they are longer 
than the generality of Herefords and Devons, 
and a great many Short Horns are as large 
and as heavy at three years old as the 
Devons and Herefords are at four. They 
carry plenty of tallow according to age, and 
the best of them have a fine silky grain, 
with marbled flesh. I find no beast come to 
the scale better, with the exception of the 
thickest, lean-fleshed, short-legged, polled 
Scots ; and I have purchased many half- 
breds between the best polled Scots and the 
Durhams fed in Scotland; these half-bred 
bullocks weigh exceedingly well according 
to size—no beast better. The Herefords 
have beautiful, fine-grained,, marbled flesh; 
but many of them are light in their thighs 
and lean flesh, and deceive the butchers in 
weight, especially when they are patchy 
with pommels of fat flesh without, and but 
little tallow within. I consider the Durham 
cattle, take them all in all, are the best breed 
for the farmer or breeder for profit; and Sir 
Charles Knightley’s Durham oxen, when 
cut up, are as good flesh as the best Here¬ 
fords, and are worth as much per pound. 
When I speak of Durhams, I do not mean 
coarse Short Horns. 
William Creasor, Butcher. 
Newport Market, March 27th, 1855. 
For the American Agriculturist 
WATERLOO CORRESPONDENCE. 
RENOVATING OLD SOIL, ETC. 
You very properly demur to a very slash¬ 
ing agricultural criticism in the New-York 
Tribune, on the “ old daisy fields of Con¬ 
necticut” ; it would have been better had the 
writer given the modus operandi by which 
said starved fields “ could be made to pro¬ 
duce wheat with more profit than usually 
arises upon the arable products of the west," 
so that “ every dollar thus expended would 
pay back fifty per cent per annum ” ! But 
the mistake of the Tribune is in the profit, 
not in the feasibility of renovating an ex¬ 
hausted soil. I have seen land in New Eng¬ 
land brought up from a barren sand, so thor¬ 
oughly exhausted of the mineral constitu¬ 
ents of plants, that even the daisy refused 
to take root in the desert waste. Leached 
ashes and stable manure composted with 
swamp muck gave a crop of millet and clo¬ 
ver, which was plowed in when ripe as a more 
thorough amendment. Winter rye for early 
spring soiling; and millet and clover, Indian 
corn, &c., succeeded ; all were manured by 
the droppings of milk cows, which were 
fed in stalls, and bedded on dry peat or swamp 
muck. But if there is no “ fifty per cent ” 
profit in this farming, there is some intel¬ 
lectual comfort in seeing the desert blossom; 
and the present incumbent can now keep forty 
milk cows and pay rent for a farm, on 
which, before, no organic life could be sus¬ 
tained. I am inclined to believe that it is 
much easier to keep up a calcareous soil,like 
ours in western New-York, to a state of or¬ 
dinary fertility, than the granitic formations 
of New-England, perhaps for the reason that 
lime plants, the best of all amendments when 
plowed in as a fertilizer, will not perfect 
themselves on the granitic soils when they 
are even partially exhausted by cropping. 
In his late pamphlet on the relations of 
chemistry to agriculture, Liebig tells us, 
that his experimental field of ten acres was 
so thoroughly sterile that its vegetable 
yield would not feed one sheep,” and that to 
bring that little farm into full productiveness, 
cost him, with his experiments, in four years, 
$3,200 more than the sale price of the pro¬ 
ducts grown on it.” But as farmers do less 
by proxy than a chemist, have a better phys¬ 
ical training, and more habitual economy in 
the details of farm labor, they can, if prop¬ 
erly instructed, do more with much less ex¬ 
pense. Liebig had also ulterior views to 
subserve in multiplied experiments by no 
means connected with the necessary amend¬ 
ment of the soil. It is at least evident that 
the great chemist of Giessen must have had 
his head a little turned by what he took to 
be the result of his mineral applications to 
the soil, when he says, “ The effect of indi¬ 
vidual substances could be clearly traced 
and was manifested in many cases in a truly 
wonderful manner. A deficiency or excess 
of phosphate of lime, of alkalies for root 
crops, of alkaline earths for clover, of alkali 
silicates for the cereals, was plainly revealed 
in the growth of these plants. The trial 
plots appear like the writing on the leaves of 
a book ; their significance was evidence even 
to the uninitiated.”—p. 33. But as these min¬ 
eral substances were never trusted alone, 
but always accompanied by stable dung or 
other organic refuse, how could he refer the 
above results solely to his cherished min¬ 
erals. 
I have no doubt but that to thoroughly 
exhausted soil, such mineral manure as it 
contained in leached wood ashes is the most 
economical, if not the most indispensable, as 
a nucleus for the soils renovation; but so 
far as my small experiments extend, give me 
vegetable refuse or stable dung in preference 
to concentrated manures, either organic or 
inorganic, particularly for heavy tenacious 
soils; because in the process of decompo¬ 
sition a fine mechanical action is kept up in 
the soil, and the crop is fed as it needs it, 
with both ammonia and carbonic acid. I 
take it that no mineral application nor the 
salts of ammonia alone, could, in three ap¬ 
plications in three years, turn a stiff, drab 
clay into a fine permeable earth of the color 
and appearance of black virgin mold, capa¬ 
ble of retaining all the necessary moisture 
for growing crops in the most trying drouth. 
Fall plowing or trenching in such manure in 
a tenacious soil, is an almost indispensable 
condition to the results, and without the aid of 
the frosts of winter, it would take six years, 
instead of three, to produce the same amelio¬ 
ration of the soils, color and texture. The 
draining of a stiff soil is always a prelimi¬ 
nary necessity to its amendment ; it should 
never be treated with sand, unless it is ac¬ 
companied with carbonaceous matter or re¬ 
fuse, as the affinity between clay and sand 
is so great that the product is too compact; 
but if sand is united with coarse vegetable 
materials, the affinity is broken and the 
amelioration perfect, until the soil becomes 
abused by long-continued cropping, without 
any return of enlivening manures. 
N’Importe. 
A SUBSTITUTE FOR SUGAR CANE. 
The annexed letter from Rev. Mr. Wilder, 
a missionary of the American Board in South 
Africa, says one of the editors of the Journal 
of Commerce, will be interesting to agricul¬ 
turists, as bringing to their knowledge a sub¬ 
stitute for the sugar cane, which is repre¬ 
sented to be capable of culture wherever In¬ 
dian corn will grow. Whether it will be 
found more economical to cultivate this 
plant at the North, than to purchase sugar 
grown in Louisiana and Brazil, is yet to be 
ascertained. The general name of the new 
plant is Life, of which there are several va¬ 
rieties. Mr. Wilder has sent us three of 
them, as will be seen by his letter. The 
seed is small, about the size of broom-corn 
seed, which it resembles. Indeed the plant 
itself, from the description given of it by our 
correspondent, must belong to the Indian 
corn family. Every farmer knows that the 
stalk of our common Indian corn contains 
much saccharine matter, and it has some¬ 
times been expressed, and reduced to mo¬ 
lasses by boiling. We shall give the Imfe a 
fair trial, so far as culture is concerned, and 
will report the result to our readers in due 
time. 
Umtwaj.ume, Natal, ) 
South Africa, Jan. 6, 1855. j 
I herewith send you a few seeds of a plant 
indigenous to this country, for the manufac¬ 
ture of which into sugar a patent has recent¬ 
ly been obtained in England by a gentleman 
from this colony. Those interested in the 
patent have no doubt of its entire success, 
and that it will bring streams of gold into 
their pockets. 
The plant is called Imfe (vowels as in 
French) by the Kafirs, but they distinguish 
some two dozen varieties by specific names. 
I send you three varieties, with names on 
each paper, viz : Ufatana, Umofwini, Ihlosa. 
While growing it resembles Broom corn, and 
produces its seed after the same manner. 
The natives of Natal plant it with Indian 
corn, and cultivate it in the same manner, 
and it comes to perfection in about the same 
time, say from 3 to 41 months. They culti¬ 
vate it wholly for its saccharine juice, of 
which, under but slight pressure, it yields a 
much larger quantity than does the common 
sugar cane, but not of so rich a quality. I 
should say that the same bulk of juice con¬ 
tained from one-half to three-fourths as 
much sugar as the juice of common cane. 
The advantages it has over common cane, 
are, that it grows well wherever Indiau corn 
does ; it is raised from the seed in foui 
months, ready to be made into sugar ; it 
grows on high lands as well as on low, ana 
the abundahce of seed it produces, may be 
used for provender for horses. 
I give you below the names as called by 
the Kafirs, of the different varieties with 
which I am acquainted :— Ilitwe —very long, 
12 feet or so, one half the head hangs down. 
llibohla —head hangs flowing around the 
stem. Unyezana, Ihlosa —has two black 
stripes on the stem, just below the head. 
Ufatana —small erect head, an excellent kind. 
Ilienga —drooping head. Uboleleka —has an 
appearance of decay. Usompofu —buff-col¬ 
ored. Ubchlana —seeds like Guinea corn of 
West Coast. Ulubemba —has two distinct 
heads. Uboyana —has down on the seed. 
Utyaka. Imfemkulu —tall thick stem ; spread¬ 
ing head. Unfimbalutyapa —very long joints. 
Umhambahlale. Umhlagonde — red leaves 
and erect head. Inyao —long joints, droop¬ 
ing head. Ilidakandoda —erect head, black 
seeds ; fit for use ^before the seed ripens. 
