amMican agriculturist. 
62 
ticularly desirable that ewes be well kept while 
the buck is with them ; it will be advantageous 
to give them a little clover, hay, oats, peas, oil¬ 
cake, and to keep them at night in dry, warm 
sheds. ‘ It is well to give the buck a little extra 
grain or oil-eake separate from the ewes. Care 
and attention to the flock at this season, and 
during the winter, will be amply rewarded by 
an increased number of large and healthy 
lambs, and by more wool of a superior quality. 
Remember that warmth is equivalent to food, 
and that salt and water are essential to health, 
while regularity in feeding is very desirable. 
Another writer, in the same paper, has well 
expressed an opinion we have long entertained, 
in reference to horns on sheep. We should ex¬ 
tend the inquiry to all animals. Horns on the 
living are good for nothing but to wound and 
destroy. We, hence, go for short-horns, and 
eventually, for an improved breed with no 
horns at all. For wild animals, they are useful 
for defence ; on domesticated, they are good for 
nothing. The writer referred to says: 
There are two reasons which induce me to 
offer a few remarks to the farmer on the sub¬ 
ject of polled sheep. One is, I believe a decided 
advantage may result to the wool-growing com¬ 
munity from a consideration of the subject. 
The other is, I am now compelled to buy horned 
rams for a cross of blood, because I cannot get 
such polled ones as I desire, that are not nearly 
allied to my own stock. 
I believe that nearly all middle and long- 
wooled sheep are polled, while the males of the 
finer-wooled varieties are usually horned. 
I have for many years regarded horns on 
sheep in a domesticated state, as not only a use¬ 
less, but a troublesome and expensive append¬ 
age ; and in 1845, fortunately getting hold of a 
very superior polled ram, I commenced to try 
to breed a flock which should be hornless. I 
proceeded by not. only selecting polled rams, 
but so far as practicable, perfect polled ewes 
also; and here let me remark, a ew r c that ap¬ 
pears to the casual observer to be without horns, 
is not always a perfect poll. There must be a 
cavity, instead of a fullness, where the horns 
usually attaches, or she cannot be depended 
upon to produce polled lambs with certainty, 
although the sire be polled. 
The result of my eight years’ labor is, I do 
not now have but one horned ram lamb in about 
ten or twelve; and I do not believe that I have 
sacrificed one iota in form or constitution, or in 
quality or quantity of wool. 
Some of my objections to horns are briefly as 
follows: 
1 . The substance that goes to make horns, is 
the same that enters into the composition of 
wool. 
2. If rams are polled, you may let all the 
pure blooded ones run entire , to the age of one 
or two years, and then, any that are rejected as 
rams, will make as good wethers as if gelded 
while lambs. 
8. Where horned rams run in a flock in sum¬ 
mer, they are sure to fight, and if they do not 
kill each other outright, lose the skin about the 
horns, become fly-blown, and without constant 
care, more or less of them die. 
A gentleman, who has been engaged in wool 
growing over twenty years, and who keeps near 
one thousand sheep, told me he annually lost 
enough rams from these causes to pay all his 
taxes. 
4. Hqrned rams frequently strike ewes in the 
side, bruising them, loosening their wool, and 
occasionally causing them to cast their lambs. 
5. You can shelter and feed about double as 
many polled as horned rams in a given space. 
In conclusion, I would say I am always open 
to conviction. Has any one a reason why 
sheep in a domesticated state should have 
horns ?” 
Ohio Gattle Sale. — Thirty pure Short¬ 
horned cattle, the property of the Clark County 
Importing Company, were sold at auction at 
at Springfield, Ohio, on the 6th instant. A bull, 
two years old, brought $1,000; one eighteen 
months old, $3,500 and another, $1,900, besides 
others at prices ranging from $625 down to 300. 
Cows sold at $1,425, $1,300, $1,000, down to 
$205 each. 
-- 
CAPITAL IN FARMING. 
The merchant who, having occasion for a 
capital of ten thousand dollars in his business, 
should reduce it one half for fear of losing it, 
would be deemed unfit for his employment. If 
his capital, under his own care, paid twelve per 
cent., while in the bank it paid but six, he 
would hardly be thought sane, if he should 
change it. If, with his capital and labor, in the 
first case, he could make two thousand dollars 
annually ; in the latter, he could make but one 
thousand,—a sum which would barely pay his 
family expenses and leave him nothing for the 
enlargement of his business. 
Yet the folly, which is so transparent in the 
case of the merchant, is hardly noticed in the 
farmer. He flatters himself that, because he 
he has made his income meet his expenses, he 
has lost nothing. He has conducted his opera¬ 
tions upon a very prudent scale, because he has 
incurred no debt and all his investments are 
perfectly safe in the soil; though that soil has 
not paid him two per cent, above working ex¬ 
penses. 
In nothing are our farmers more deficient, 
save in knowledge, than in the use of capital in 
their business. In very many cases they have 
not half capital enough, and in many more the 
capital is invested in the wrong place. A farm¬ 
er with five or ten thousand dollars, is much 
more likely to invest the whole of it in acres, 
than in the materials to work his acres with, 
profitably. The old adage has been handed 
down, that “the soil will not run away,” and he 
has implicit faith in its truth. This course is 
like that of the merchant, who should invest all 
his capital in a warehouse much too large for 
his business, while he hired but a few hundred 
for his stock in trade. More than half the pro¬ 
perty of most of our farmers is in the shape of 
unproductive capital. The unused acres do not 
pay the taxes on them; and yet they would 
think it in the straight road to ruin to sell an 
acre, and invest its price in labor or manure, 
which would bring them in a large return, in 
less than six months. 
Any man competent to manage a farm can 
make better use of his capital than to loan it at 
six or seven per cent. If all the wants of his 
farm are not fully met, and he lacks capital, he 
can afford to hire it at those rates, until they 
are met. It will be an injury to him not to use 
capital enough, just as serious as it is to the 
merchant, or to the mechanic. If he under¬ 
stands his business he is just as safe in hiring 
capital as any other business man. 
It is good economy to use capital freely to 
stock a farm to the extent of its capacity. If 
you have pasturage for twenty cows, and milk 
but fifteen, you lose the profit of five. If the 
profits on a cow are ten dollars a yeai', you sink 
fifty dollars as palpably as if you threw it into 
the dock. You need all the stock your farm 
will support, in order to make manure, and to 
enlarge its capacity for future working. There 
are few farms that, with a judicious manage¬ 
ment, may not be made increasingly productive 
and profitable for some years to come. 
The quality of stock, too, is to be regarded 
in the use of capital. It is much better econ¬ 
omy to pay the value of a good milker, than to 
buy a poor cow at any price. Some are such 
miserable milkers, or the quality is so poor, that 
they will give you no profit. 
The quality of seed for your crops is as well 
worth looking to as the quality of live stock. 
Hybrids and foulseed are not worth buying at 
any price. Clean grass seed, clean oats, wheat, 
and rye, sound, well-ripened corn adapted to 
your climate, are safe investments. 
The farmers are not so deficient in these mat¬ 
ters as they are in the employment of labor. It 
takes money to pay the hired man , and money 
is not always to be had. “ It will not do to 
hire too much help,” is another of the old saws 
that tradition has handed down to us, in which 
there is supposed to be embodied a large share 
of the wisdom of antiquity. “ It will not do to 
hire too little labor,” is a saying quite as pithy 
and worthy of attention. A railroad contractor, 
who needed a hundred hands to finish his sec¬ 
tion in three months, would be a fool to employ 
twenty-five for a year, if his own time in direct¬ 
ing their operations was worthy any thing. He 
could direct the labors of a small one. A farm¬ 
er, who attends to his business in person, can 
lay out the work of ten men almost as easily as 
of two. If there is a profit on the labor of one 
man, there is ten times as much an the labor of 
ten men. Yet most of our farmers overlook this, 
and vainly endeavor to make their business pro¬ 
fitable by employing one man to a hundred 
acres of land. 
What would be thought of a merchant who 
had business for five clerks, and should try to 
get along with one? Would he not very soon 
have occasion to complain of hard times ? Yet 
this is about the scale on which multitudes 
employ farm labor. The result is that few 
acres are tilled, and these are not half worked 
with the plow, harrow, cultivator or hoe. 
Agriculture is a poorly-rewarded business, and 
he is a happy son, who escapes from the drud¬ 
gery of the New-England farm to the work¬ 
shop or the counting-room. 
Good tools is another safe investment for the 
farmer. Every one of our readers who works 
an acre of soil should not fail to visit some one 
of the Agricultural Fairs this fall, for the pur¬ 
pose of seeing the improvement in these imple¬ 
ments. In this item alone, it will pay the ex¬ 
penses of a trip to Boston or New-York, Pro¬ 
vidence or Worcester, as the case may be. The 
best plow will save a great deal in horse or ox 
flesh, in the course of a season, and do its work 
far better, and secure better crops. It will not 
do for a farmer now, to overlook the cultivators 
and seed-sowers, the harrows, and other labor- 
saving implements, that offer their aid. Let him 
study their character and uses, and introduce 
them upon his farm without delay. Many of 
them will pay for themselves in a single season. 
But, in nothing upon the farm, will capital 
pay a larger interest than when invested in ma¬ 
nures, or in the material for their manufacture. 
“Fertilizers” is the great want of our hard- 
cropped New-England farm. The daughters of 
the horse-leech are not half so importunate in 
their cry of “ give, give,” as our hungry soils. 
This is the cry of our mowing fields, that do 
not yield a ton to the acre. You may safely 
give them manure until they yield three tons. 
Here is an acre and three-quarters in sight from 
our window that has but nine tons of hay this 
summer, and it has not been plowed these 
twenty years. It is liberally dosed with stable 
manure, liquid and solid, every spring; and it 
pays back for all that is given. We tried an 
experiment with guano and super-phosphate of 
lime on mowing land, and, in the increasing 
yield of hay, got back the capital and more than 
ten per cent, profit. 
This is the cry of our pastures. By the ap¬ 
plication of guano and super-phosphate of lime, 
they may easily be made to yield twice their 
amount of feed, and you may safely double 
your stock upon the same number of acres. On 
pastures at a distance from the farm, these are 
far the most economical dressings. 
Every acre under the plow calls for more ma¬ 
nure. No farmer should be satisfied till he gets 
at least his eighty bushels of shelled corn to 
the acre. Manure and good tillage will bring 
every cultivated acre to this degree of fruitful¬ 
ness. By all means, employ capital enough to 
make the most of your stock in the manufactur¬ 
ing of manures upon your own premises. Se¬ 
cure labor enough to open that muck mine this 
fall, and compost a few hundred loads with a 
uarter of its bulk of stable manure. Whoever 
oes this, and carefully notes the results, we are 
