294: 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[August, 
they are caught and sold for manure. The 
cured fish are much used by the laboring class¬ 
es in the cities and large manufacturing towns. 
It is one of the cheapest forms of animal food, 
costing the consumer only about three cents a 
pound. To those who live in the vicinity of a 
fishery and cure their own fish, the cost is much 
less. In some places the fishery is owned by 
the town, and is sold annually to the highest 
bidder. The Agawam, at East Wareham, 
Mass., is rented thus at $G00 to $900 a year. 
The yield is about 1,500 barrels of alewives. 
The Restocking of Streams with this fish 
is very easily accomplished. In many streams 
where there are few still left about the estuary, 
nothing more would be needed than to put up 
a fish-way over two or three of the dams. In 
others, fish would have to be brought from other 
quarters. In either case the cost is so small, 
and the results are so promising, that the work 
ought not to be delayed. This work is going 
on at many places on the New England coast. 
The Poquonoc Fish Company have had a 
large run of fish this season, as a consequence 
of the spawning of a few alewives in the first 
pond above tide-water, two years ago. The 
fish-way costs less than $40, and may answer 
for shad and salmon as well as alewives. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 92. 
A few days ago, I had a letter from our friend 
John Johnston. “I want to show you my 
apple-orchard,” he wrote, “ planted eight years 
ago, last May. The trees had an immense quan¬ 
tity of fruit on last year, and I had a great many 
picked off when quite small, thinking they 
would break down the branches. All who see 
them say the 3 r are the finest, trees they ever saw. 
They were only two years old when planted. 
If you will come, I will tell you what I did for 
them, that makes them look so splendid. Come 
and see, and then you will believe .” It is hardly 
complimentary to suppose that I would not be¬ 
lieve without seeing. Almost any man will be¬ 
lieve a thing when he sees it. But it. requires a 
certain amount of training to enable one to be¬ 
lieve without seeing. It is a very low order of 
intellect that will not yield implicit assent to a 
statement that rests on satisfactory evidence. 
Many farmers rather pride themselves on this 
mental characteristic. “ You can’t fool me !” 
is one of their ever recurring phrases; while 
it is a matter of observation that, of all men, 
these incredulous people are most easily duped. 
I should despair of ever amounting to any¬ 
thing, if I could not believe without seeing. 
But I am very glad I went to Geneva. Mr. 
Johnston’s trees are, by far, the handsomest and 
healthiest I have ever seen; and I came back 
with a determination to at once carry out his 
recommendation. I have gaiued this much, 
at any rate, by seeing the trees. The plan is 
simply to make a lye, just as you would for 
soap, and wash the trunk and larger branches 
of the trees with it. “If the lye was very 
strong,” Mi'. J. said, “ and made from hickory 
ashes, it might, perhaps, need to be diluted with 
a little water; but the lye from ordinary ashes 
is not too strong.” He applies it with a swab 
tied to a stick. A man went over an orchard 
of a hundred trees in an afternoon. He has 
done this once every two years. There is not 
a particle of moss, lichen, or fungus, on any of 
the trees. The slumps are as smooth as the 
standard of a mahogany table. And I do not 
wonder that Mr. Johnston feels proyid of them. 
Still, I do not think that this splendid result 
is due merely to this biennial washing with lye. 
The land is thoroughly underdrained. It is a 
rich, clay loam. The trees were only tAvo years 
old Avhen set out—and a well-grown two-year- 
old apple-tree is better than a poor-grown one 
four years old. Then, great pains AA T ere taken 
to prepare the land, and to set out the trees. 
Wide holes were dug, two feet deep; and some 
decomposed swamp-muck put in the holes, and 
covered with good soil. The trees were then 
set out and staked, and the land has been kept in 
hoed crops ever since, and I presume has been 
liberally manured. And you must recollect 
that Mr. Johnston’s manure is manure—not rot¬ 
ted straw. And the coal-ashes from the house 
have been put round the trunks of the trees. In 
short, it is quite evident that Mr. J. has petted 
his trees almost as much as, during his long life, 
he has been in the habit of petting his cows 
and his sheep. He is constitutionally incapable 
of neglecting any thing he undertakes. Thor¬ 
oughness is an essential characteristic of the 
man, and accounts for much of his great success. 
I was telling Mr. Johnston about the red-root, 
or “pigeon weed,” as he calls it, that came up 
in such immense quantities in my two-year-old 
clover-field, this spring. “It is a terrible pest,” 
he said, “ and cost me a great deal of trouble to 
get rid of it. I thought, at one time, it would 
ruin me.” He studied the habits of the plant, 
and thus ascertained how best to attack it. He 
sowed some red-root seed in flower-pots each 
month, commencing in February, and kept them 
well watered. The seed sown in February, 
March, April, May, and June, did not germi¬ 
nate any earlier than that soAvn in-July. That 
sown in August germinated more freely, while 
that soAvn in September came up at once, and 
in great numbers. Here he got an explanation 
of the fact that red-root rarely proves of any 
damage to any crop except winter wheat. It 
shows, too, that a summer-fallow for wheat will 
not kill it. The seed mainly lies dormant in 
the ground during the whole summer; and the 
thorough cultivation causes it to start up the 
more freely in the wheat. But if you fallow 
the land, and then do not sow it to Avheat, the 
red-root will spring up and can be easily killed. 
The red-root seed gets into the manure from 
clover-hay and wheat-straw; and Avhen the 
manure is applied to wheat, it springs up, and 
there is no chance of killiug the plants except 
by weeding and hand-hoeing. It Avas for this 
reason that Mr. Johnston adopted the plan 
of spreading his manure on grass land in 
September. The red-root seed then germinates, 
and Avhen the land is ploAved over next spring, 
the plants are turned under and killed. 
He advises me to treat my clover-field, where 
so much red-root has gone to seed this sum¬ 
mer, as follows: Pasture it with sheep, and 
eat it down close. Then, during the latter part 
of August, *r early in September, harroAV the 
ground and tear up as much of the soil as pos¬ 
sible. Then draw out all the manure that can 
be found on the premises, and spread it evenly 
over the land, and take great pains to break up 
all the lumps. Thomas’ smoothing harrow is 
just the implement for this purpose. In this 
way, he thinks, I shall cause all the red-root 
seed that has fallen on the surface of the land 
this summer, to germinate; as well as that con¬ 
tained in the manure. Plow up the land in the 
spring and plant corn. 1 propose to carry out 
this plan, except that I think I shall sow peas 
instead of corn ; and then, after the peas are 
! off,sow Avinter wheat, and seed down with clover. 
A correspondent of the American Agricultur¬ 
ist, at Alton, Illinois, incloses a letter he has 
recently received from his brother, “contain¬ 
ing,” he saj's, “a fair and just criticism, mainly 
of what he has read in the Agriculturist and 
which he would like to see published. Here it 
is: “I gather from the Agriculturist a great 
many items of interest to me as a farmer; first 
among which is ‘Walks and Talks.’ The 
writer lives in a part of the country that 
I never saw,' and has Essex pigs and South- 
Doavu sheep, manuring and draining, smartly 
on the brain; still, I find, beyond controversy, 
that thorough cultivation , manure, and draining, 
are the main springs of successful farming. I 
mean such manure as a poor man can make, or 
save; and drainage by open ditches. Tiles are 
too expensive for the mass of farmers. Most 
farmers in the Middle and Western States are 
poor; or, more correctly, they commenced 
poor and on a small scale. * * They cannot 
live on prospective profits. They can not wait. 
The profit must come yearly, from one-crop or 
another, and no dodging. * * My notion is, 
that thorough cultivation is the poor man’s way 
to high farming; as in it he gets much of his 
manure from the air and rain, and his drainage 
from deep and frequent stirring of the soil.” 
Ido not object to such “criticism.” I have 
felt all the difficulties he alludes to, and have 
spoken of them time and again. No one real¬ 
izes more fully than I have done, the fact that 
a poor man must have something to live on. I 
have, for this very reason, frequently sown a 
crop, when I knew that if I could only afford to 
wait I should have made more money in the 
end by summer-fallowing the land. The prin¬ 
ciples I have endeavored to teach, are believed 
to be correct. But a farmer must judge for 
himself how far he can adopt them. 
“ Thorough cultivation is the poor man’s way 
to high farming”—and the rich man’s too, on 
the great portion of land in the United States. 
And this is precisely the doctrine I have always 
taught. And I am more and more convinced 
of its truth, as I see its effect on my own farm. 
Stirring the land hastens the decomposition of 
the organic matter in the soil, and otherwise 
renders the latent plant-food available. To 
some extent, too, it enables the soil to absorb 
ammonia from the atmosphere. 
“That is all very well,” says the Deacon, 
“ but Avhat have you to say about having ‘ Essex 
pigs and South-Down sheep on the brain’?,” 
Simply that no matter how impartially a man 
may Avrite, he is very apt to be suspected of in¬ 
terested motives. I have been accused of hav¬ 
ing Berkshires and Yorkshires on the brain, 
and yet I have not a single pig of either of these 
breeds; and so with sheep. I like South-DoAvn 
and Leicester sheep because of their intrinsic 
merits. But I have not a sheep of either breed. 
I have written a good deal in favor of Shorthorn 
and Ayrshire cattle. But I do not breed them. 
This is what I have “on the brain that farm¬ 
ers should use thorough-bred nude animals to 
cross with their common stock. If, among cattle, 
they prefer Shorthorns, or Devons, or Here- 
fords, or, for milk, Ayrshire or Jerseys, I have- 
no objection ; if they like CotSAvokls or Leices- 
ters or Lincolns, for long-wool and mutton 
sheep, or if they prefer the South-Do avu, I say 
go ahead and prosper; if they prefer Yorkshire 
or Berkshire or Essex pigs, I still say all right. 
You can hardly go wrong. It will make com¬ 
paratively little difference Avhich breed of pigs 
is selected, provided the animal is thorough-bred 
and is a good specimen of the breed. This i.i 
