406 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
with the exception of sheep and cows in milk, 
as much as possible to cured fodder. 
But sheep and cows should be allowed to 
partake of green feed as long as it is to be 
obtained. They do better on it than on hay, 
even if they are supplied with grain. Sheep, 
however, are of all animals, perhaps, the 
most decidedly injurious to mowing lands, 
when allowed to feed late in the fall. The 
formation of their mouths, and particularly 
of their teeth, enables them to cut closer 
than other animals-often below the surface of 
the soil, thereby fatally injuring the roots by 
laying them bare and exposed to frost. But 
the cow can effect little damage in this way. 
She is not so rigid an economist, or perhaps, 
I should say, is far less greedy and vora¬ 
cious, and takes only what the plants can 
spare as well as not.— Germantown Tele¬ 
graph. 
NANKIN OR SHANGHAI SHEEP. 
On the 13th of September last, or a little 
more than ten months ago, I bought four 
sheep of the Nankin breed—all ewes—from 
a ship that arrived from Canton. Thpy had 
been on ship-board about 160 days. I sent 
them to my farm, Norwalk Island, Ct., for 
the purpose of trying sheep raising in a 
small way. It may be proper to state that I 
had no other sheep before these—bought 
none afterward—nobody gave me any—they 
were all I had. In the course of three weeks 
Host five—(remember I had orignally but 
four)—and had eleven left, and now I count 
as many as twenty-six. 
Now this story may savor a little of Mun¬ 
chausen, and unless 1 explain, will hardly 
be credited for the truth. The increase of 
course is the question before us. The ewes 
each had three lambs, making them sixteen, 
old and young : but one of the ewes was 
hurt in transporting her to the Island, and 
she died in the act of parturition, with all her 
issue, and one other lamb died also, leaving 
eight lambs and three old ewes ; these I 
wintered, and now, both old and young are 
coming in again, four having done so. From 
this second crop so far, one has two lambs, 
another has four; still another four; and 
one has five lambs ; and when they all shall 
have had lambs, which will be in two or 
three weeks, I shall have as many as thirty 
five or forty, all from three sheep, in ten or 
eleven months; and although it may seem 
incredible, in the short space of two years at 
that rate, I must have (supposing I parted 
with none,) at the least five hundred. Can 
Pennsylvania beat this 1 I should state 
another remarkable fact in relation to them, 
that has occurred since I saw you ; i. e., the 
old ewes have within two weeks gone to the 
buck again, and will have lambs again, say 
by next Christmas, or three times in fifteen 
months.— Theodore Smith, in Progressive 
•n • <d 
Farmer. 
To Take Out Stains. —Coffee stains, mud 
splashes, &c., will mostly give way to the 
use of soap and water. Curd soap should 
be applied for this purpose. Obstiqate stains 
which will not yield to these treatments 
must be submitted to the bleaching powers 
of the fumes of burning sulphur. This is 
conveniently applied by igniting some brim¬ 
stone under a cone or funnel made of card 
board. The stains must be wet, and then 
held over the top of the chimney until they 
disappear. 
To get a suit of clothes cheap, good 
and honestly made, go to the unpretending 
shop of Charles Emmons, No. 11 Peck-slip. 
o says a well-dressed friend at our elbow. 
TETHERING CATTLE. 
Those who have visted the Island of Jer¬ 
sey for the purpose of procuring pure speci¬ 
mens of the very beautiful and valuable breed 
of dairy cattle peculiar to that island, must 
have observed with surprise, the very large 
number of cows, heifers and calves that the 
occupiers of farms containing from ten to a 
dozen acres of.land only, contrive to keep on 
their very small holdings, much of it, also, 
lying in open field, with no fence, and boun¬ 
dary stones only marking their lines of sep¬ 
aration ; yet upon these strips of land they 
feed their cattle, without fear that they will 
trespass upon the ciops adjoining, even to 
the extent of a fraction. This they do, by 
practising a rigid course of tethering their 
live-stock, of whatever age or kind, even to 
the sheep ; which thus shave the crop with 
the closeness of the shears and the precision 
of an inch-rule ; while without the aid of the 
tether, perhaps it would not be too much to 
calculate that they could not support one- 
half the stock they do. To be sure, their 
land is one of the happiest and their climate 
one of the most delicious that can be ima¬ 
gined—a dry soil in a moist climate, for it is 
said, it rains on the island three hundred 
days, or rather nights and days in the year ; 
with three green-crops that may be said to 
be almost peculiar to the channel-islands— 
namely, the “ Luzerne,” the “ Jersey kale,” 
or gigantic kale, and the “ Jersey parsnip ;" 
yet all these, without the most rigid system 
of tethering, would not enable them to rear 
the very large number of young cattle which 
are being constantly sent abroad, east, west, 
north and south, at the age of a year and 
half. 
But the system of the tethering cattle is 
by no means confined to these islands, or to 
small farms; on very many of the best 
managed farms in England, and where the 
fields are large and the crops heavy, the sys¬ 
tem is found to be equally beneficial in every 
point of view, especially with regard to 
economy ; the stock being thus prevented 
from roaming over the crop to be fed, de¬ 
stroying it with their tread and soiling it 
with their excrements. There, the farms 
are furnished with an iron plug and chain 
for each animal thus tethered, the range 
being in accordance with the state of the 
crop, which, if heavy, is doled out to the 
animal by a removal of the plug three feet 
in width, as he can thus cut off the crop 
without stepping upon it; horses being se¬ 
cured by a strap and buckle around the fet¬ 
lock of the fore foot, and cows, by a strap 
and buckle around the root of the horns 
these straps being made of leather, not hemp 
or rope, as that will swell and shorten dur¬ 
ing wet weather, to the pain and grief of the 
animal. In many cases, the crop on a long 
field will be found to grow as fast as the ani¬ 
mals can feed it off, for by the time they 
reach to the farther end, the growth at the 
entrance will have made such progress as to 
be sufficient to tether over again, the land 
having had the advantage of the dressing of 
their excrements, regularly spread; as also 
that from the carbonic gas from the lungs of 
the animal, which I am satisfied from long 
experience and careful observation amounts 
to far more in the way of manure than many 
are aware of or ever dream of. I can easily 
understand how tethering cattle can be made 
most convenient and profitable in a late 
spring season, but how the system of soiling 
is then to be conducted, I never could satis 
factorily learn.— J. Tillson, in Boston Cul¬ 
tivator. 
Startling Intelligence. —A German as 
tronomer says that in twenty millions of 
years from now the earth will be destroyed 
by a comet. 
iurfitnlfatral gipdramt. 
TRANSPLNTING EVERGREENS. 
Whatever may be experienced by different 
parties in various localities, I conclude that 
it will be granted by most men who are at 
all conversant with the subject that autumn 
is the safest and consequently the best time 
to transplant evergreens. When I say 
autumn, I mean the latter half of September 
and first half of October : so much as to 
time in general. Nevertheless, I would in 
every instance advise the operation to be 
modified by the exercise of a sound discre¬ 
tion on the part of the manager—be he gar¬ 
dener or not; and by his judgement of the 
character and quality of the soil, the state • 
of the weather at the time, the size and con¬ 
dition of the plants, &c., &c., all which must 
be regulated by the good sense of the planter, 
and on the right exercise of this, success or 
failure will follow. Without any high pre¬ 
tensions, I may state that I have had some 
experience in planting, the result of which 
is, that in this, as in most other things, there 
are exceptions to general rules ; but, on the 
whole, my endeavor in transplanting an 
evergreen would be as to time to do it early 
enough to let the roots get a living hold of 
the soil before the vital action of the plant is 
arrested by the approaching cold of winter. 
It sometimes happens that evergreens plant¬ 
ed in spring do well. If plants and ground 
are in relative right condition, and the at¬ 
mosphere clouded, the roots act at once, 
and they are safe ; this is an exception : but 
if keen dry winds and clear sky are then 
prevalent, adieu to the evergreens. Many 
years ago somebody (I have forgotten who) 
wrote something plausible about the safety 
of transplanting deciduous trees in summer 
when full of leaf; to test the matter, I trans¬ 
planted some.Blackfftalian Poplars (I think 
six in number) in free growth, and in an 
open sandy meadow near the side of a river. 
The trees were carefully lifted, saving all 
their roots, which were carefully and natu¬ 
rally laid out in wide and not deep holes, and 
saturated with water (which, however, the 
soil would not retain) most plentifully. The 
result was that every one died. Could any¬ 
thing else have been expected"? So much 
for listening to idle day-dreamers. I ought 
to have stated that the Poplars were from 15 
to 20 feet in height.— Quercus, in Gardeners' 
Chronicle. 
DI0SC0REA BATATAS. 
I began to feel convinced that what has 
been said in favor of this esculent as a prof¬ 
itable acquisition to British industry is far 
from being true, and that the public has been 
led to spend money upon an article of no 
practical value. Nor does there appear to 
be any beauty in the foliage or habit of the 
plant to attract attention beyond that of a 
Scarlet Runner. Mr. Henderson’s pamphlet 
contains much encouragement, but theoreti¬ 
cal plausibility does now whq,t it ever has 
done—fails to satisfy a practical public. I 
always feel it disagreeable to impugn or 
throw discredit over what appears to be re¬ 
spectable evidence, but in this case there is 
no other alternative, and now let us appeal 
to facts. Like others I was supplied with 
tubers, which were placed in small pots about 
the beginning of April, and submitted to a 
temperature of 60° till the shoots had grown 
5 to 6 inches in length. The plants were 
then removed to a coolar situation, and 
ultimately to a cold frame, where they re¬ 
mained till they were planted in the open air, 
which was towards the middle of June. 
The situation chosen for them was a south 
border, well drained, and at the time of 
