MERIC AN AGRICULTURIST. 
309 
THE FARMING ARISTOCRACY. 
In Prussia there are many landed propri¬ 
etors who have immense establishments and 
carry on an extensive agricultural trade. 
The thousands of acres which their farms 
comprise are generally suitably divided into 
woodland, arable, meadow and pasture land. 
A writer in Blackwood says that in order to 
derive a fair profit, the proprietors of these 
estates are obliged to turn every thing which 
they raise to some account. A large portion 
of the manures which they employ consists 
of black earth from the peaty, pine leaves 
from the forest and the ashes of their fires. 
They grow rape for the seed, and the pro¬ 
prietor, if he has the means, erects a crush¬ 
ing mill, uses the cake for his cattle, and 
sells the oil. He makes his brandy of pota¬ 
toes, and feeds his stock on the refuse 
which remains in the still. The smallest 
and poorest potatoes are only retained for 
the table, all the large and mealy ones being 
given either to the pigs or the brandy maker. 
The lakes are fished in the winter, and the 
produce of the nets sent to the Ber¬ 
lin market. Some proprietors unwilling to 
waste wood ashes, build a glass house and 
melt them into glass. If the landlord pos¬ 
sesses a bed of good marl he burns it into 
lime with his waste timber. If he has good 
clay he establishes a brick manufactory or 
pottery. He attempts to turn every thing 
into money; and the owner of an estate 
may thus be farmer, oil maker, distiller, 
fisherman, glass manufacturer, lime burner, 
potter, lumberman, fand a dozen of things 
beside. With all these establishments it 
may easily be imagined that the Prussian 
rural aristocracy, generally, have little time 
to pass in the capital. They generally take 
apartments in a hotel there for a month or 
two at most in the course of the year, and 
after attending a few state balls and royal 
receptions, retire again to rural life and 
country habits. 
The laborers who live upon the farm, re¬ 
ceive three or four silver groschen per day. 
Five silver groschen are equivalent to an 
English sixpence. They have a house and 
two or three acres adjoining, for which they 
pay a rent of one or two day’s work per 
week, during the year. They are allowed 
also to cut the inferior wood on the heath 
for fuel, and to gather the pine leaves from 
the forest for manure. Milk is their 
chief diet, and many never eat meat, except, 
perhaps, their own home-fed pork. 
Boston Journal. 
PLASTER OF PARIS AND GREEN MANURE. 
In conversation not long since with Mr. 
Benjamin Chandler, an industrious and ob¬ 
serving farmer in Starks, Somerset County, 
he observed that he had, by experiment, as¬ 
certained how he could use green or unfer¬ 
mented manure in the hills of corn. For¬ 
merly, whenever he put unfermented manure 
in the hills, the corn would, instead of grow¬ 
ing thriftily, as is the case when well rotted 
manure is used in this way, become yellow 
in color, and seems to be injured rather than 
benefited by it. This he attributed to too 
great a supply of ammonia, or other sub¬ 
stance liberated when the manure began to 
ferment. 
Having read that plaster of Paris would 
absorb and change the action or nature of 
ammonia, he tried it in this way. 
After placing a shovel full of green manure 
in the hill, he covered it over with soil, and 
on this threw a large spoonful or more of 
plaster of Paris, then dropped his corn and 
covered it. When thus planted, the com in¬ 
variably grew rank, and filled the ears as 
well as if the manure had been thoroughly 
composted and decomposed, 
One spring, when planting his corn in this 
way, he had not plaster enough to go over 
the whole field, and accordingly, was under 
the necessity of planting a portion of it with 
green manure in the holes and no plaster 
over it. 
The result was an excellent crop as far as 
the plaster was used, while in the remainder 
of the field, the corn was yellow and sickly 
during the whole season, and yielded com¬ 
paratively little. These are important facts 
in the corn culture. 
FEEDING T3E ALLIED ARMIES. 
It would seem from the following letter 
which we cut, from the Mark Lane Express, 
that the large allied army now in the Crimea, 
may be easily supplied with food another 
season close at hand. 
Galatz, Dec. 11, 1854. 
One of the most important questions 
awaiting solution at the present crisis—one 
to which the allied Governments can not too 
early or too closely devote their attention— 
is undoubtedly that of the free navigation of 
the Danube. Not only is it a question of 
vast importance to the commercial world in 
general, as affecting the exportation of grain 
from Wallachia, Moldavia, Bulgaria, aiid 
Bessarabia, but the circumstance appears to 
have been hitherto overlooked that these 
provinces would form one of the nearest and 
cheapest markets whence the allied armies 
in the Crimea might obtain supplies of pro¬ 
visions of every kind with the utmost facili¬ 
ty. The difficulties put in the way of the 
exportation of corn during the past year by 
the Russian Government have caused the 
accumulation of enormous stocks of all kinds 
in Moldavia and Wallachia, and, putting en¬ 
tirely out of the question the quantity of cat¬ 
tle, &c., that might be obtained from Servia 
and Bulgaria, the privinces of Moldavia and 
Wallachia alone are capable of furnishing 
any quantity that can possibly be required of 
flour, barley, kidney-beans, potatoes, hay, 
wines, spirits, oxen, pigs, preserved meats, 
&c., for the supply of any army in the Crimea, 
or any other point on the shores of the Black 
Sea. It is therefore to be hoped the allied 
Powers will not lose sight of the incalculable 
advantages which the immediate reopening 
of the Danube would offer, not only to com¬ 
merce in general, but to their own armies at 
this moment, and that by occupying the coast 
of Bessarabia they may enable the inhabi¬ 
tants of these provinces to bring foward 
their supplies in safety. 
New Phases of Mormonism. —Joe Smith, it 
will be remembered, was rather a bellicose 
kind of a prophet. Sometimes he was re¬ 
monstrated with and pretty closely ques¬ 
tioned. Mr. Quincy told a good joke about 
Joe, as illustrative of his ingenuity and dig¬ 
nity. Said Joe : “ If a man smite thee on the 
right cheek, turn to him the other also, but if 
he should then strike thee on the left cheek, 
pitch into the fellow /” Mr. Quincy told 
another good joke of Joe, at Nauvoo, when 
an offensive and rebellious gentleman was 
found among them; he was very formally 
waited upon and requested to sell out. If lie 
then persisted in remaing, three men were 
dispatched to sit down at his door and whit¬ 
tle ; when he went into his fields they fol¬ 
lowed and whittled; when he went off' to 
town to trade, they followed him whittling ; 
if he went to church or the tavern, there 
were the eternal whittlers, grave as judges, 
never smiling. This was more than human 
nature could stand, and at last the obstinate 
fellow would give up and cut stick himself. 
Tolecls Blade. 
Fatting Dorkings. —To produce the fat 
fowls that are seen in greater perfection in 
the London markets than elsewhere, and 
which are generally termed (although they 
are not) capons,.Dorkings are cooped for fat¬ 
ting at the age of three to four months in 
summer and five to six in winter, being fed 
with oatmeal, mixed with water or milk ; this 
must be given fresh three times a day, the 
first meal being early in the morning; and, 
in addition, the birds should be supplied with 
whole corn (either dry or boiled), gravel, 
clean water, and a turf or green meat; the 
most scrupulous cleanliness as to troughs, 
coops, &c., being observed. By these means 
a fowl, if previously well fed, will be fat- 
enough for any useful purpose in a fortnight 
to three weeks; should they be required very 
fat, some mutton suet, or, what is equally 
good, the parings of the loins of mutton, 
may be chopped up with the food. The un¬ 
natural process of cramming is frequently 
recommended, but I have never found it ne¬ 
cessary. It should be borne in mind that a 
fowl can not be kept in the greatest degree of 
fatness for any length of time, as the over 
repletion sooncauses internal disease. The 
houses must be dry, quiet, dark, and warm, 
and the fatting coops carefully kept from 
draught, and warmly covered at night during 
cold weather. 
[Tegetmeier’s Profitable Poultry. 
Composition of Eggs. —An examination of 
the eggs of numerous animals proves that 
these bodies are as varied as the animals 
which they produce. They differ in the ele¬ 
ments present, in their organisms, and in 
their structure. Some of them do not hard¬ 
en by exposure in boiling water. In the 
eggs of some birds, the white is almost fluid ; 
in others, it is gelatinous. The color of the 
white of a hen’s egg, after boiling, is pure, 
opaque, white, and solid. That of the lap¬ 
wing, after cooking, becomes transparent, 
opaline, greenish, and so hard that it may be 
cut into little stones, used in some parts of 
Germany for common jewelry. The chemi¬ 
cal constitution of the eggs of various birds 
differs very materially. 
Turning to the eggs of fishes, it is found 
that the new-laid egg of the ray is covered 
with a shell of a bronzed-green, whose tissue 
is made up of short, felty fibres ; its general 
form is rectangular, more or less elongated 
and curved on both sides. The internal or¬ 
ganism is also peculiar, and among other 
differences it is found that the yellow is not 
separated from the white by any membrane. 
The white also differs from the white of a 
bird’s egg in its chemical properties. 
The eggs of a bounce shark are rectangu¬ 
lar, much longer but much narrower than 
those of the ray. Its shell is hard, resisting, 
yellowish, horny. The vitellus or yelk oc¬ 
cupies the greater part of it, and the white is 
more viscous than that of the ray. 
American Journal of Arts and Sciences. 
Sponge Fishing. —Sponge fishing is said to 
have become a very profitable business in the 
neighborhood of Key West. One hundred 
thousand pounds are reported to have been 
gathered during last year, and the sales 
amounted to twenty-five thousand dollars. 
This article is mostly procured by natives of 
the Bahamas. This is a new branch of busi¬ 
ness for Key West, and was formerly con¬ 
fined to the Mediterranean. We believe, 
however, that the finer quality of sponge is 
not found on our coasts, although the coarse 
description is abundant all about the coast 
of Florida, and the Bahama Banks. 
Late papers from Florida inform us that 
the weather has been exceedingly mild and 
delightful in most parts of that State, and 
that peas and other vegetables were budding 
and blossoming in the open air. 
