388 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
light clover soil free from root or stone, and 
with but a single span of horses before it! 
We all went out in the afternoon to a large 
clover-field, where quite a cluster of the 
farmers of the vicinage had assembled to 
witness the operation of Mr. McCormick’s 
Mower—one of the very few (I regret to say) 
Yankee farming emplements on exhibition. 
There was no competition at this time, but 
the machine worked admirably, cutting very 
smoothly, closely and clearly, a swath five 
feet wide as fast as the span of horses draw¬ 
ing it could walk, and evidently making very 
moderate demands on their muscles. The 
ground was quite uneven, and at one place 
the grass was vigorously stamped down by 
the spectators, in order to test the machine 
under the most adverse circumstances. In 
this way some stalks were made to escape 
cutting, but the machine was nowise choked 
nor impeded. The most satisfactory feature 
of the performance was the entire absence 
of Mr. McCormick’s agent, after the first 
round, leaving the machine to be operated 
entirely by French laborers who never saw 
it before that day. There was a general and 
hearty manifestation of delight from the as¬ 
sembled farmers, and I trust that not this 
only, but American machines also will be 
tested again, and put in competition with 
those of Europe, under the eye of a critical 
committee. If the Exhibition is to be any¬ 
thing better than a novel show, here is (in 
fact) its proper element. 
MOWING MECHINES AND STEAM PLOWS. 
Rev. H. W. Beecher, in the Independent 
of last week, thus speaks of these great 
labor-saving implements. 
& # & # # 
But if a Mower had taken a notion about 
the time we did to come to Lenox, what a 
world of work would have been spared to 
human muscles! Here are thirty-five or 
forty acres of grass, over which, in half 
circles, advancing four or five inches at a clip, 
the men have crept, shuffling along with their 
feet, crouched and sweating, hot, and tired in 
the small of the back. Two men will mow 
say four acres a day, besides looking after 
that which was cut yesterday. Here are 
ten days work. But throwing out the 
Sabbaths and throwing in the rainy days, 
(which this year have striven to wipe out 
the memory of every day of last summer’s 
drouth,) and there will be at least ten days 
more, or full three weeks of haying ; i. e., 
mowing, watching the barometer, (that is my 
part of the work.) dodging showers, or 
nesting in the dry hay, with the showery 
West coming down upon us with black 
banners flying and thunder trumpets sound¬ 
ing. However, these occasional matches 
between the storm and the farmer’s whole 
family, are not the least interesting and 
exciting of country sports. There is no 
game of ball like it, no rowing match can be 
compared to it. As for a horse-race, it is a 
mere piece of vulgar cruelty in comparison. 
- * * * # * * 
Let us see ; how did we get to this spot 1 
Ah, we started with a mowing-machine. 
Well, we wanted to say that if instead of 
these slow but peaceful scythes, we had had 
one of these mowers with iron sinews, that 
is never hurt or tired, or sweaty, but rolls 
quietly along over twelve acres a day and 
then tucks up its knives at night as if it had 
been out walking for a little sport in the grass 
—how much time would have been gained, 
how much struggle saved, how easily, on 
the few fair days, fair but hot, might we 
have cut and cured the whole crop without 
being chased out of the field by storms. 
In that case we should have had our barley 
all harvested before this. Now it is crinkled, 
and will require twice the labor to secure it. 
Our wheat too, spring wheat, would have 
been attended to before this. Now it is all 
down. Maybe it is sprouted. Perhaps it will 
mildew, or it may rust. 
We are accustomed to regard the im¬ 
provements in machinery chiefly in their 
relations to manufacturing and locomotion. 
But nowhere else will a greater change be 
wrought by machinery than upon the farm. 
We are in the infancy of agriculture. 
The knowledge of the elements with which 
we deal, and which compose rocks, soils, 
plants and animal fiber, that organic chemis¬ 
try puts into our hands, gives direction and 
accuracy to our processes, but does little to 
abridge manual labor. Mechanics step in at 
this point, and promise to set men free, and 
to make a servant of iron that will toil for 
him without fatigue and with quadruple 
speed. 
Great as is the saving of labor achieved by 
reapers, mowers, threshers, etc., they are all 
as nothing in comparison with that which 
must come before long— the steam pi.ow! 
What a revolution would take place when a 
gang of five or six plows, cutting from fifteen 
to twenty-four inches deep, shall plow from 
thirteen to fifteen acres a day! A farm of 
twenty acres will then be equivalent to a 
hundred acres now. A hundred acres so 
cultivated will yield unexampled crops. It 
will be better for small farmers than it would 
be to make every man a present of four times 
as much land as he had before. 
Then, too, large farming could be carried 
on without the drawbacks which now hinder 
it. A thousand acres plowed, tilled and 
reaped by machinery, could x be handled as 
easily by the proprietor as now he handles a 
hundred acres. 
As yet we have only scratched the surface 
of the earth. We have never fairly har¬ 
nessed mechanics, or made a farmer of 
science. 
The man who invents a steam-plow that 
will turn twelve or fifieen acres a day, two 
feet deep, will be an emancipator and civil- 
izer. 
Then labor shall have leisure for culture. 
Thus working and studying shall go hand in 
hand. Then the farmer shall no longer be a 
drudge ; and work shall not exact much and 
give but little. Then men will receive a 
collegiate education to fit them for the farm 
as now they do for the pulpit and the forum, 
and in the intervals of lab >r, gratefully fre¬ 
quent, they may pursue their studies ; espe 
cially will books be no longer the product 
of cities, but come fresh and glowing from 
nature, from unlopped men, whose sides 
branches, having had room to grow, give the 
full and noble proportions of manhood from 
top to bottom. God speed the plow! 
Yerba Amarilla, or the Yellow Herb.— 
We make the following extract of a letter 
from the correspondent of the Patent Office, 
treating a new dye-stuff, dated Rudyville, 
Texas, June 25, 1855: 
“ I have obtained from Mexico the seeds 
of an herb used among the peasantry to dye 
yellow, green, and its corresponding changes, 
called Yerba Amarilla, or the yellow herb, 
with copperas as a mordant; it is not the 
plant known as Weld, nor is it known out of 
Mexico, as far as I have been able to learn. 
I design sending some of it this fall to some 
woolen factory in the North for the purpose 
of making experiments. The colors pro¬ 
duced by it are as fast as the blue obtained 
from indigo.” 
An Illinois paper says there is a man in 
Olney so dirty that the assessor puts him 
down as “ real estate.” 
From the N. Y. Times,Augusts. 
NEW-YORK FARM ERS’ CLUB. 
In another column we give a brief report 
of the proceedings of this Club yesterday. 
They were quite as miscellaneous as usual, 
since some dozen or more subjects were in¬ 
troduced. This is, however, not to be won¬ 
dered at, since at these semi-monthly gath¬ 
erings, gentlemen from various parts of the 
country, who chance to be in the City, come 
in to spend an hour or two; and each one 
brings forward any subject which he may 
happen to be interested in. Letters from va¬ 
rious parts of the country are now quite fre¬ 
quently addressed to the Club, which elicit 
remarks or discussions, so that under the 
present, organization, it is next to impossible 
to confine the action of any meeting to a par¬ 
ticular subject. Any one coming a hundred 
miles to hear a discussion upon the question 
set down for the day, will be quite likely to 
find it set aside, and a dozen others intro¬ 
duced. This is not by any means pleasant, 
but it is, perhaps, quite as well that it is so. 
Let no one, however, pin his faith upon 
anything he may find reported from the Club. 
It is an irregular body, bound by no laws, 
and every person attending (everybody is in¬ 
vited,) is at perfect liberty to speak upon 
whatever topic and in whatever manner he 
may choose. If he has a machine to adver¬ 
tise, let him carry it to the Farmers’ Club 
and tell his own story. If the gentlemen 
present on that day are in a proper mood, he 
may get an endorsement, and this will do to 
fill out his handbill. If any one has a spe¬ 
cial manure to sell, and can plead well him¬ 
self or get others to do it for him, he secures 
the benefit of an advertisement. 
Owners of new implements or manufac¬ 
turers of special manures, however, should 
be careful to secure a good advocate to ac¬ 
company their wares. If you have a fruit 
you wish named or puffed, be sure and send 
along a large supply for members (1) to taste 
of—not forgetting the reporters, for they, 
too, have tastes —and ten to one you will 
have the fruit named as you wish it, nem. 
con., and puffed to your liking. The extent 
of the gratis puffing will depend upon the 
amount and sweetness of the eatable speci¬ 
mens you furnish. 
But notwithstanding these objections to 
this (in) organization, it has many redeem¬ 
ing traits, and we would by no means see it 
annihilated, even to please our friend of the 
Buffalo Commercial. Together with much 
chaff are some grains of pure Wheat. Many 
good ideas are suggested and new topics in¬ 
troduced at these gatherings, which are in 
themselves valuable. The business of the 
reporters for most newspapers is to record the 
actual sayings and doings, and it is only 
necessary for the reader to sift out the grain 
for himself and let the chaff go to the winds. 
With these gentle warnings, we advise all 
who have leisure while in the City to drop 
into the Club; and for those who can not 
come we will furnish as good a report as 
possible. 
A Long Drive. —A paper in Indiana coun¬ 
ty, Pennsylvania, chronicles the passage 
through the town of Indianna of Mr. J. 
Grinder of Armstrong county, with a drove 
of several hundred head of cattle for the east¬ 
ern markets, which he had bought in Texas, 
and driven over-land a distance of fifteen 
hundred miles. They looked remarkably 
fine, considering that they had been on the 
road since the first of April, a little over four 
months from the time of being started. In 
view of our numerous steamships and sail 
vessels plying between New-Orleans and 
the North, and of the various lines of rail¬ 
way leading to the West and South-west, it 
is singular that these cattlejshould be taken 
such an over-land route. 
