948 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
WHEAT AND OATS IN WISCONSIN NOT EX¬ 
CELLED BY OHIO OR OTHER TES 
To the Editor of the American Agriculturist: 
After reading some remarks in the Amer¬ 
ican Agriculturist, on wheat growing in 
New-Jersey, where 70 square rods of ground, 
well manured and well cultivated, produced 
some ten bushels of good wheat, and your 
remarks on “ Do our Eastern Farmers Bet¬ 
ter their condition by removing to the West,” 
I conclude to send you a note of how we 
grow wheat and oats in Wisconsin. 
Mr. Logan Graves, my neighbor, a man of 
undoubted veracity, informed me that, in 
June, 1854, he “broke ” or turned over some 
ten acres of native prairie, on which he 
sowed Club wheat in the Spring of 1855, 
with no other preparation but thorough 
harrowing. The result was, that he har¬ 
vested some fifty-one bushels of good 
wheat per acre. I saw it growing and have 
no doubt of the truth of the statement. 
Another of my neighbors, Mr. G. W. Bly, 
harvested a crop of oats some four or five 
acres in 1854, that yielded ninety three 
bushels per acre, with once plowing, and 
without manure of any kind. Mr. Biy, is 
said to be strictly honest and may be re¬ 
lied upon, as a man of truth. This, Sir, will 
be hard for you to believe, but none the less 
true however. 
Of Ohio, you say, it is and ever will be the 
richest. It has a greater supply of good 
land, &c. In this, I think you are mis¬ 
taken, having resided some forty years in 
that State, I have some knowledge of it, 
as well as of Indiana, Michigan, and Wis¬ 
consin. * * * N. Wirt. 
Chester, Dodge Co., Wisconsin. 
Remarks. —We are pleased to know that 
our correspondent is gratified with his new 
Wisconsin home, and that such extraordina¬ 
ry instances of cropping have been witness¬ 
ed, as he states. We have heard tell of 
sundry like feats in almost every Northern 
State, Rhode Island scarcely excepted. But 
will Mr. Wirt say that the above crops—51 
bushels of Spring Wheat, and 93 bushels of 
Oats, with once plowing, and no manure, are 
the rule and not the exception, in Wiscon¬ 
sin I These extraordinary chance crops are 
no data for average cultivation. Wisconsin 
is a fine State, like Iowa, and all the Great 
West. We have said nothing—we intend 
to say nothing to the prejudice of that broad 
and truly beautiful country. In our late re¬ 
marks touching the expediency of Eastern 
farmers migrating to the West, we intended 
to state the case fairly. We have done so, 
and given them good advice, which we be¬ 
lieve the sound judgment of the majority 
will approve. We have not sought to stop 
emigration, but only propose that when 
farmers do emigrate, they shall do it under- 
standingly. We have nothing further to 
say in'relation to Ohio, or its superiority 
over other Western States. Our remarks 
must be taken in this broad construction, 
and we do not care to reiterate them, or 
make further qualification now. All the 
Western States are good enough ; and if 
their inhabitants will only work, and behave 
themselves, they will reach and enjoy all of 
earthly happiness that poor fallen humanity 
ought to expect.—[E d. 
TIM BUNKER ON MOSS BUNKERS. 
Hookertown has been thrown into quite a 
ferment lately, by the arrival of numerous 
loads of fish from the shore, for the purpose 
of manure. The muck heaps are in a fer¬ 
ment with the fish, and the people with the 
talk about them. As in all new enterprizes 
there is a great difference of opinion, and 
almost every man is as decided in his views 
as if he had used moss bunkers from his 
boyhood. Some declare that the fish can¬ 
not be used without making an odor, more 
distinguished than all the spice groves of 
the tropics, and that the man ought to be 
prosecuted, who will put moss bunkers on 
any field within a mile of the road. Others 
think the fish are good for nothing after they 
are put upon the land. There is nothing 
like the good old stuff right out of the barn¬ 
yard. But the majority are bound to try 
the article, as they agreed last winter to 
take, some fifty thousand, some sixty, and 
some a hundred thousand. They live too 
far from the shore to apply them fresh to 
the growing crops, and they are almost 
without exception putting them into heaps 
and covering them with muck and peat. As 
this latter article is abundant, they use five 
or six cords of it to one of the fish. 
Tim Bunker very early consulted Deacon 
Smith, and the back numbers of the Agri¬ 
culturist, and after thinking the whole mat¬ 
ter over a few days, he came to the conclu¬ 
sion that he should go in for fifty thousand 
of the fish, and run the risk of it. The very 
first load of the article he brought through 
the street, he was hailed by Mr. Jotham 
Sparrow-grass, the uncle of Jeremiah, of 
bird-killing memory. Jotham was wise in 
the ways of the fathers, and knew all about 
fish, for he had lived over on Long Island, 
when he was a boy. 
“Well, Squire Bunker, I spose you think 
you are going to do a nice thing with them 
’ere fish, but let me tell you, that you don’t 
know everything if you do take the papers. 
Fish pizens land. I’ve seen it tried time 
and agin, and I never knew- it to fail.” 
“ How do you know that Jotham "?” 
“ Why you see, sir, that ’ere paper is fill¬ 
ing your head full of foolish notions. When 
I was a boy my father and all his neighbors 
used to use fish : John Woodhull, Tom Tut¬ 
tle, Ben Miller, and a lot more. They got 
mighty great crops for a few years, and then 
the land got to be so poor that fish didn’t 
produce no more effect upon it than so much 
sand. They came to the conclusion that 
fish pizened the sile, and I never have 
thought much of fish since.” 
“ Well, Jotham, can you tell me if they 
used anything else beside fish for manure"?” 
“ No they did not. You see fish was so 
plenty in Peconic Bay, all along the shores 
of -Southold, that they thought it was of no 
use to cart dirt into their yards.” 
“ Wei!, that was the trouble with them, 
Jotham, and the reason that the land run to 
sorrel and moss. Deacon Smith has stud¬ 
ied into this matter a little more than I have, 
and the deacon says that if we only use 
muck with fish, or if we turn in green crops 
occasionally, the land will grow better all 
the while, and produce great crops. He 
says the fish stimulate the land to produce 
great crops of corn, oats, hay, &c., and im¬ 
mense quantities of carbonaceous matter 
are carried off, and the soil is soon exhaust¬ 
ed, unless we put back the carbon in some 
way.” 
“ I don’t believe a word about your car¬ 
bonates, Tim Bunker, and the other stuff 
you and the Deacon get out of the papers. 
I tell you fish will pizen the land, and Hook¬ 
ertown will be a desert in less than five 
years, if you keep carting these stinking fish 
into town.” 
“ But if fish spoil the land, Uncle Jotham, 
why do they keep using them on the island. 
One town over there last year raised twenty 
thousand bushels of wheat and corn, rye 
and oats in great quantities, and it was just 
where they use the fish %i greatest abund¬ 
ance.” 
“ I don’t believe a word on’t. That wheat 
crop, you see, was grow’d on paper. You 
can’t raise wheat in this part of the country. 
The sile is too old.” 
“ Well, Uncle Jotham, I see you are dead 
set agin the fish. But I have made up my 
mind to try them, and I think I shall show 
you that they won’t spoil the land.” 
Timothy Bunker, Esq., touched up his 
span and ended the conference ; while Uncle 
Jotham struck his cane upon the ground 
with great emphasis and tugged off, mutter¬ 
ing as he went, “ W T ho would have thought 
it, Tim Bunker using bony fish. It’s no use, 
they pizen the sile.”— [Ed. 
Hair Oil for Horses. —Immense fortunes 
have been realized in the manufacture of 
Hair Oil for the Lords and Ladies of crea¬ 
tion. But here is a recipe for the manu¬ 
facture of hair oil, said to be successful in 
promoting the growth of horse hair —render¬ 
ing it pliable and glossy. We give the 
technical formulae of the prescription : 
R.—Take 
Brushus et curricomus.ad-libitum. 
Elbow greesus.qantum suff. 
Blanketisus.firstratus. 
Stablus.warmus. 
Fodderus_never say diet-us, but meal us 
et oatus. 
Exercisus.non compromisus. 
The effect of the above is truly wonderful. 
It results in— 
Coatus shinitus. 
Apetitus, wolfitus. 
Muscularitus, two-forty-itus. 
Horse Latinus. 
— Amer. Vet. Jour. 
Hay, Cotton, and Tobacco Presses.— 
Those who have inquired of us from time 
to time in regard to these implements, will 
find something on the subject in the Adver¬ 
tising Columns.— [Ed. 
The matter of the Agriculturist is nearly 
all ORIGINAL. 
