AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
19 
This is certainly a strong Board of Directors, 
and no better names could be selected to merit 
the confidence of the agricultural community. 
We are requested to say that persons desi¬ 
rous of obtaining further information on the 
subject, or wishing to obtain copies of the con¬ 
stitution, can apply to Mr. Sizer, at the agricul¬ 
tural warehouse on Poydras street, or to Mr. 
Wharton, at Sherman & Wharton’s, No. 98 
Camp street. 
The next meeting of the new Society will 
take place at the Mechanics’ Institute, on the 
evening of the first Monday of next month. 
We presume there will be a large attendance, 
by proxy or otherwise. 
-« e *- 
A Profitable Farm. —The Farm of Bryan 
Jackson, near Wilmington, Delaware, consists 
of 220 acres. On this farm he employs three 
hands all the year, at $132 per annum, each; 
two men extra for six months, at 12 per month, 
and day bonds, whose wages amount to about 
$50 a year ; making in all for labor, a cost of 
$590 a year. Mr. Jackson, in the American 
Farmer, says: “ The sales of the farm the past 
year will not vary much from fifty-three hun¬ 
dred dollars.” 
-• •.- 
STOCK RAISING IN TEXAS. 
We concur entirely with the views of Mr. 
Dennett, the Texana editor of the Indianola 
Bulletin, upon the very great importance and 
value of the stock-raising interest of Western 
Texas. That this interest is not duly appreci¬ 
ated, great even as is the disposition of our 
people to invest capital in the business, we are 
well satisfied—and we have as little doubt that 
if properly cultivated, with railroad facilities to 
reach the northern markets, this source of 
wealth to Texas would be swelled to a magni¬ 
tude little dreamed of by the most sanguine. 
But to the remarks of Mr. Dennett: 
In the Northern markets, New-York and New- 
England beef is selling at from 8£ tolOJ- cents— 
milk cows, $25 to $35, for ordinary cows, $40 
to $70 for superior quality—working oxen from 
$110 to $180—farm horses for plowing, hauling, 
&c., from $300 to $425 per pair—sheep from $6 
to $10. 
We notice that the Cambridge market, Mas¬ 
sachusetts, is supplied with beeves, cows and 
calves, horses, hogs, sheep, &c., brought by rail¬ 
road from Maine, New-Hampshire, Vermont, 
Massachusetts, New-York, Pennsylvania, Ken¬ 
tucky, Ohio and Illinois. 
These prices at the north are nothing unusual. 
We doubt if they will ever be lower. The in¬ 
creasing facilities for raising these animals do 
not correspond with the increasing demand. 
What, then, should our State do in view of 
these facts? Every possible encouragement 
should be given to stock raising, and the 
rights and interests of stock raisers should be 
protected by law. No State in the Union can 
begin to compete with Texas in raising cattle, 
mules, horses, sheep and hogs. Railroads are 
stretching from our large cities to every nook 
and corner of the country. Texas and New- 
York, and Texas and California, will eventually 
be linked together by railroads, and our citizens 
should now be preparing extensively for these 
results of interprises now on foot. If we can 
send beeves to California and New-York by rail¬ 
road, we shall distance all competition in stock 
raising throughout the country. This State 
can now furnish pasturage for all the cattle, 
horses, and sheep in the United S fates and Europe. 
She can furnish the soil that can produce more 
and better cotton than all the Southern States 
now raise or have ever raised, or ever will raise. 
She can furnish the water power to manufacture 
a thousand times more cotton goods than all the 
New-England States now manufacture. She 
has a surface extensive enough to make forty 
such States as Massachusetts, and she has a 
soil forty times more fertile. With a suitable 
population, and a proper amount of capital ju¬ 
diciously invested, she could send forth yearly 
productions that would yield returns as valua¬ 
ble as the gold of Ophir, in the far-famed ships 
of Solomon.— Texas State Gazette. 
New Food for Sheep. —Whilst I was at Ge¬ 
neva, I observed every one collecting carefully 
the fruit of the hotse-chestnut, and on inquiry 
I learnt that the butchers and holders of grazing- 
stock bought it readily at a certain price per 
bushel. I inquired of my butcher, and he told 
me it was given to those sheep in particular that 
were fattening. The horse-chestnuts were well 
crushed ; something in the way, so I understood, 
that apples are, previous to cider being made. 
They are crushed or cut up in a machine kept 
solely in Switzerland for that purpose; then 
about two pounds’ weight is given to each sheep 
morning and evening. It must be portioned out 
to the sheep, as too much would disagree with 
them, being of a very heating nature. The 
butcher told me that it gave an excellent rich 
flavor to the meat. The Geneva mutton is 
noted for being as highly flavored as any in Eng¬ 
land or Wales.— E. Z>., in Agricultural Gazette. 
-• 9 • 
Cure for Ringbone. —I noticed in the Culti¬ 
vator for May 15th, an inquiry for the cure of a 
ringbone in a colt, and answer, take high wines 
of cider brandy, add saltpetre as much as will 
dissolve, and wash the ringbone turn or three 
times a day. One of my neighbors cured one 
of three or four years’ standing, by the applica¬ 
tion a few times.— Boston Cultivator. 
THE FIFTH CLAW OF THE DORKING FOWL. 
The Royal Agricultural Society’s Prize Es¬ 
say on Poultry teaches us that “ The fowls of 
this breed have five toes on each foot, a pecu¬ 
liarity, if absent, denoting impurity of blood.” 
This opinion should have been qualified, or 
might have been given as an opinion, rather 
than in the dogmatic form of an undoubted 
matter of fact. It would have been prudent to 
have cautioned purchasers from buying a so- 
called Dorking fowl with four toes; but as a 
matter of fact, the above statement is fallacious. 
Birds of the very purest strain sometimes pro¬ 
duce chickens with four toes only, and this pe¬ 
culiarity occasionally occurs to a large extent; 
in the year 1852 my D~"king fowls, of whose 
purity, through many generations at least, there 
could not be the slightest doubt, produced one- 
fourth of their chickens with four toes—an in¬ 
cident which never occurred with the same 
fowls before, nor did it transpire in 1853, al¬ 
though no change in their management had 
taken place. In the same season large numbers 
of the chickens had five toes on one foot and 
four on the other; while several has six toes on 
one foot and four on the opposite. Neither 
will the converse hold good—the fifth toe being 
by no means a test of purity; for it will show 
itself through several generations by one cross 
of Dorking blood. In the same year in which 
my pure-bred Dorkings produced chickens de¬ 
fective in the number of their claws, some half- 
bred chickens presented this peculiarity in a 
redundant degree—the cockerels with the plu¬ 
mage, gait, and figure of their sire, a game 
fowl, possessed the fifth toe of extreme length 
and size; and nothing is more common than to 
perceive this supernumerary member on the 
feet of barn-door fowls, which contain in their 
veins as much variety of “ blood” as is to be 
found in a Yankee. Yesterday, for instance,gl 
.saw in the yard of a farmer, a fowl which re¬ 
sembled a Spangled Hamburg in color, but it 
possessed a fifth toe, and was the offspring of a 
white game-cock with a grey spangled fowl not 
a Dorking, but probably possessing through 
some remote ancestor a faint trace of that breed. 
Is not the fifth toe, after all, an “abnormal,” 
and useless growth ? Did it not spring up or¬ 
iginally as a surplus appendage in some fowl of 
great size, and become stamped by hereditary 
descent through many generations, so as to be¬ 
come almost a fixed type, through parties breed¬ 
ing from the large hen, because of her size, 
and not for the purpose of securing this supple¬ 
mentary member to the locomotive organ? 
That it is a defect (if such a paradoxical 
term may be applied to a thing in excess,) is 
certain, for some high-bred chickens now before 
me, have great difficulty in walking, in conse¬ 
quence of these prolongations from each foot be¬ 
coming entangled with each other; and suffer 
some pain from the abrasion which constant 
friction has produced upon each supernumerary 
toe— Poultry Chronicle. 
NEW PLAN OF BREAKING-IN HORSES. 
A new system of breaking-in horses, by 
means of a very few lessons, and so as to pre¬ 
serve all their precious qualities, has come into 
use; and what is singular is that the author of 
it is a lady, named Isabelle. Having a great 
liking for horses, Madame Isabelle some years 
ago began studying the different systems em¬ 
ployed in breaking-in horses, and came to the 
conclusion that they were all more or less de¬ 
fective. She then sought for a plan of her own, 
which should render the horse more tractable 
by developing its intelligence; and she suc¬ 
ceeded in discovering one so perfect that the 
most restive horse is reduced to obedience in a 
very short time, and without the slightest ill- 
treatment. Her plan, as is almost always the 
case with things really useful, is very simple. 
She begins by making the horse carry his head 
high, and perpendicularly, whereby she pre¬ 
vents the weakness caused by the constant 
bending of the neck, gives free play to the mus¬ 
cles in the neck, and allows full action to be ex¬ 
ercised over the mouth. Then she places on 
the horse a surcingle, surmounted by an iron 
rod 15 inches long, which is bent about four- 
inches forward at the summit. On each side of 
the rod are placed four rings, destined to receive 
reins according to the height that may be de¬ 
sired. The horse soon gets accustomed to this 
check, and it exercises a great moral effect on 
him. He places his head in such a manner as 
not to suffer from the bit in the mouth, and 
thereby soon gets accustomed to being held in 
hand by his rider or driver. The surcingle also 
promptly accustoms him to adopt the best 
movements, and to advance when desired with¬ 
out offering any resistance. The breaker-in re¬ 
mains at the left of the horse, and is armed with 
a whip with a spur in it. After forming her 
system, Madame Isabelle went into Germany, 
and practised it with marked success on horses 
belonging to Prince de Lichtenstein, at Vienna. 
From Vienna she went to Russia, and there stop¬ 
ped two years. In the course of that time she 
rendered completely docile all the most restive 
horses of the old cavalry regiment at St. Peters¬ 
burg, as well as those of the Emperor Nicholas. 
Recently she returned to France, and having 
explained her plan and stated its results to the 
Minister of War, she was, by the special direc¬ 
tion of the Emperor, who was consulted, author¬ 
ised to practise it on a number of young horses 
of the regiment of Guides, and with an equal 
numbey of recruits who had recently joined the 
regiment. The lessons were given under her 
direction at the riding-school of the Ecole Impe- 
riale d’Application d’Etat Major. After the fif¬ 
teenth lesson the horses manoeuvred with the 
tranquility and precision of old troop horses. 
A few days ago, Colonel Fleury, who commands 
the regiment, manoevred the horses and recruits, 
and every one of the usual cavalry movements 
was admirably executed. 
-•-«-«-■ 
Tall Oats. —Mr. J. 'Alphin, of Sublimity, 
Marion county, Oregon, has left at the office of 
the Statesman, a head of oats, grown on the 
farm of D. S. Staton, which contained 602 per¬ 
fect grains. The head is but little, if any, bet¬ 
ter than an average one. Mr. A. also exhibited 
a large head of wheat, containing seven grains 
in each section, perfect, and of remarkable 
size,—’California Farmer, 
