1871.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
211 
least twice as much work out of our men and 
teams, as our predecessor could have done, to 
say nothing of the great advantage to crops of 
the absence of superabundant moisture. 
We have this spring seeded down one section 
of the farm (9'| 2 acres) as permanent mowing 
land, partly because it will always be well to 
have the grass, and partly because that section 
is the most conspicuous one; and we believe in 
having our best foot forward with the boot well 
polished. Three acres are seeded with a mix¬ 
ture of vetches, peas, and oats, and six with 
oats alone for soiling, to be followed with late 
fodder corn sowed in drills. About thirteen 
acres more will be used for the main crop of 
fodder corn put in early, and four acres are well 
advanced with winter rye, which will be fit for 
the scythe by the 10th of May, and again early 
in June, when fodder corn will probably be 
sown on that as well. 
We are now preparing about five acres for 
carrots and mangels. The land is that which 
was plowed so deeply year before hast, that we 
practically lost the crop of two seasons; but it 
is now turning up in beautiful condition, the 
ugly blue clay having been oxidized to a yel¬ 
low cast, and the whole being as mellow as an 
ash heap. If, as I believe, a good top-dressing 
of manure will hasten the germination of the 
seed and strengthen the early growth, the roots 
will get down to the top soil—that was buried 
a foot deep two years ago—and will carry us 
safely through any drouth we are likely to 
have, proving that brother Greeley is right in 
ids theory of deep plowing, if we only give 
him time; perhaps though it will be safer to 
wait until the crop is made, before forming a 
final opinion. 
In growing my carrots and mangels, I shall 
pursue a course different from that generally 
adopted, but one which ample experience has 
shown to be best. The land is now plowed, 
and will soon be harrowed. It had a good 
coating of stable manure last year, and will re¬ 
ceive more this year. As soon as weeds begin 
to show, it will be harrowed again; and as 
often as they appear, the operation will be re¬ 
peated until planting time. The carrots (these 
do not bear transplanting well) will not be 
planted until the first week in June, when, un¬ 
der the influence of the warm weather, they 
will come up in a few days, instead of lying 
from two weeks to a mouth as they do when 
planted early in May, and they will have a fair 
chance in competition with the few weeds that 
will remain after the repeated harrowing. Im¬ 
mediately before the sowing of the seed, a 
heavy dressing of some artificial fertilizer will 
be harrowed in. The subsequent cultivation of 
this crop will be according to the usual custom. 
The mangel seeds will be sown in a seed¬ 
bed early in May, and will be transplanted 
somewhere about the 20th of June; the field 
being kept clean by repeated harrowing to the 
very last, and artificial manure being applied 
at the last harrowing. As I have before stated, 
this is not only the best, but it is much the 
cheapest way to grow this crop; and these di¬ 
rections are not untimely, for the seed may be 
sown early in June, and the transplanting post¬ 
poned until the middle of July, and a good 
crop still be taken, if the land is rich and the 
season not unusually dry. The idea of trans¬ 
planting several acres of beets is a formidable 
one only to those who know nothing about it. 
It is a comparatively easy job to hand-weed the 
plants in a small seed-bed; they will need no 
thinning; and it is not half the work to set out 
a row of mangels at intervals of fifteen inches, 
that it would be to go over the same length 
of row, and weed and thin it by hand, if the 
seed were planted in place. Then, again, the 
seed must be planted at a time when weeds 
grow profusely, and there must be a good 
month’s fight with them before the mangels 
gain the mastery. Under the transplanting sys¬ 
tem, the harrow does all the early work of 
weeding; and the plants that are set out, being 
already from half an inch to an inch in diam¬ 
eter, grow vigorously from the start, and before 
weeds can grow aquarter of an inch in hightjhey 
will bear horse-hoeing or hand-hoeing as well as 
corn or potatoes. The ease of transplanting 
depends very much on how you set about it. 
If a man takes a lot of plants in a basket, digs 
a hole with a trowel, sets down his basket and 
picks out a plant at every step, lie will soon 
get sick of his undertaking. Our method is the 
following : all hands pull plants from the seed¬ 
bed until enough are taken for the day’s work. 
As they pull them, they cut off the tap roots and 
shorten the leaves to about four inches, laying 
them in small heaps with the tops all in one 
direction. These heaps are gathered by the 
double handful, packed in regular order in 
larger heaps, and covered with a horse-blanket. 
A puddle of cow manure, superphosphate or 
bone-dust, clay and water, is prepared in a tub 
near the heap. When plants enough are made 
ready, a force of three men and two boys is 
divided as follows : one man dips the roots in 
the puddle and puts the plants into baskets, 
which he carries to convenient parts of the 
field. The two boys station themselves near 
the center of the field, and the two men, 
one at each end of it, with a long line 
stretched between them. Each has a mark¬ 
ing-stick, 27 inches long, to mark the dis¬ 
tance of the rows. The line is stretched 
at one side of the field in the position of the 
first row, and is made fast to stakes. The boys 
then start from the middle of the line and the 
men from the ends, and walk 'on the line until 
they meet (each making one-fourth of the whole 
distance): they then run (not walk) back to their 
starting points. The men now measure off 27 
inches, and stretch the line for the next row; and 
so on. The line, of course, is perfectly straight, 
and the impression is sufficient to be easily 
seen. When five or six lines are marked, the 
planting is commenced. Each boy takes a 
basket of plants and walks backward ahead of 
his man, and drops the plants with the tops 
toward the planter’s left hand at regular inter¬ 
vals of about 15 inches. The man has in his 
right hand a “dibber” (shown in the engrav¬ 
ing, fig. 1); with this he makes a hole where 
the plant is to stand; then taking the plant in 
his left hand, he sets it in its place and gives a 
sidelong thrust with the dibber, so as to press) 
the earth firmly about the lower part of the 
plant (not the crown): strikes his dibber into 
the next spot, and so on. When the five or six 
rows are planted, and the backs are a little 
tired with stooping, it is a relief to stop and 
mark off a few more rows; but the regular 
order of the operations is kept up without 
stopping, except for dinner, until the day’s work 
on the field is finished. Of course the rapidity 
with which the planting is done depends on the 
experience and dexterity of the planter. It 
takes from 13,000 to 15,000 plants for an acre; 
and I have one man who, with a good boy to 
drop, can easily set an acre in two days. The 
same man and boy, however skilful they might 
be, would not thoroughly finger-weed, and thin 
out an acre of mangels, grown in the ordinary 
way, in twice the time. In pulling the plants, 
enough are left in the seed-bed to grow for a 
crop; but it is noticeable that these never grow 
nearly so large (although the land is usually 
richer) as do those that are transplanted. 
As some of our land is now in sufficiently 
good condition for the trial, I am going to make 
the effort to raise a few acres of potatoes and 
cabbages for sale, using the money to buy 
cheaper cattle food. This is a safe thing to do, 
for we always have an anchor to windward, in¬ 
asmuch as potatoes and cabbages can always 
be fed out if there is no market, while now and 
then, a good profit could be taken. For instance, 
if I had raised 10 acres of cabbages last year— 
a fair average crop—I could have sold them for 
enough to pay the original cost of the land, and 
the cost of draining and other improvements 
that have been put upon it. So long as cab¬ 
bages can be raised at a cost that their feeding 
value will warrant, I propose always to be in a 
position to take advantage of such a market as 
that of last winter—and I think others may 
safely do the same. To a certain extent the 
same tiling is true with regard to turnips and 
other roots. They pay to raise , as cattle feed 
alone,and at times they may be sold for five times 
their feeding value; then let them go and turn 
the money (or a part of it) into bran and meal. 
Riding on Horseback.—No. 4. 
Even more important than the Saddle—so far 
as the management of the horse is concerned— 
is the apparatus by which his movements are to 
be regulated and restrained: that is, the “Bit.” 
The various forms of bit sold by saddlers, even 
in the largest cities, are almost invariably faulty. 
They are made without much consideration of 
the use to which they are to be put, and often 
fail to produce much effect, except as a means 
of torturing the horse into a kind of sullen obe¬ 
dience. It is one of the offices of the bit to pro¬ 
duce pain ; but only when the horse resists its 
action, and then only so much as may be neces¬ 
sary to secure submission to the rider’s will. As 
he will instinctively yield to a pressure that 
would cause pain if he did not yield, and as, if 
the pain is produced from both directions, he 
will try so to move as to escape from that which 
is the more intense; it is of the greatest import¬ 
ance that the bit he constructed in such a 
manner, and so placed in the mouth, as to im¬ 
pel his head in the right direction—that is, 
toward the rider’s hand. 
The bit rests against the “ bars ” of the lower 
jaw (those parts of the jaw where there are no 
teeth). It has two levers, oee at each side; one 
end of each of these levers projects upward, 
carrying the chain that passes under the chin, 
and the other ends project downward to re¬ 
ceive the reins, by which the force is to be ap¬ 
plied. The object is to have the chin serve as 
a fulcrum, so that when a strain is applied to 
the lower ends of the levers, the pressure on 
the bars will be sufficiently suggestive of pain 
to cause the horse to draw in his head. If, from 
bad construction or improper adjustment, the 
chain becomes more painful than the bit, the 
horse will withstand the lesser pain in his mouth 
to escape the greater pain behind it, and will 
thrust out his head in obedience to the real im¬ 
pulsion. In this case the hit is virtually the 
