338 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
“PATTON STOCK.” 
tie offers to the farmer in the more thickly- 
populated portions of New-England, many 
important advantages ; these appear to be, 
that in many cases much, now pasture land, 
might be more profitably cultivated; that 
more stock might be kept, they being able to 
bear the summer better, fattening easier and 
giving more milk in hot weather; that the 
amount of manure might be increased; that 
many crops might be introduced and profita¬ 
bly cultivated which otherwise could not be, 
and that by the more thorough system of cul¬ 
ture, the farmer might become more inde¬ 
pendent of the variations of the season— 
drouth and cold. 
This necessity for the greatest economy 
in the use of land gives a value to all means 
for its improvement—manuring, draining, 
irrigation, etc. Many a German peasant has 
opportunity to learn that manure is benefi¬ 
cial in proportion to its quality. You may 
well believe this when you see land lying on 
the top of a hill or the side of a mountain, 
one-eight of a mile or more removed from 
any cart-path, heavily manured ; the manure 
having been carried to it on the heads of 
women and men up the steep, narrow, wind¬ 
ing foot-paths. I have seen, many a time, 
processions of ten or a dozen women and 
girls, each with her loaded basket on her 
head, toiling up some steep ascent, winding 
through grounds of more favored neighbors, 
till in the distance the row of baskets pre¬ 
sented almost the appearance of a miniature 
train of coal cars. It is pretty evident that 
it would not pay very well to employ poor, 
light, sun-dried stuff for the purpose—and it 
becomes to these people an absolute neces¬ 
sity to have manure in as small bulk as pos¬ 
sible. The lesson which they learn on the 
mountain-side without much urging they ap¬ 
ply in the valley. It is seldom, in readily 
cultivatable mountain districts, that one sees 
manure drying in the sun, or washed away 
by the rain. It is often in pits laid in ma¬ 
sonry and covered, placed very near to the 
stall door to receive both solid and liquid 
manure—and afterward in compact square 
heaps, placed so as to drain well, and that 
water may be from time to time poured over 
them ; which operation admirably regulates 
the decomposition which is ever going on in 
the heaps, effectually prevents loss from the 
action of the weather, by removing those 
substances rendered gradually soluble by 
the decomposition, and also prevents any 
deterioration from drying. The liquid ex¬ 
tract which flows from these heaps, is collect¬ 
ed, where best managed, in cisterns, and 
applied in the liquid form to the land, and 
forms a concentrated, quickly-acting and con- 
veniently-applicable form of manure ; while 
the strawy, insoluble portion remaining of 
the heaps, from the property of vegetable 
matter in a certain stage of decomposition to 
retain the salts of ammonia and the alkalies, 
is found to be almost if not fully equal to 
ordinary barnyard-manure. 
I have several times been pleasantly sur¬ 
prised to find, among common peasants, an 
intelligent understanding of the use of spe¬ 
cial manures in rotations—the use of bone- 
dust, plaster, lime, etc., and almost univer¬ 
sally one is sent interested inquries in regard 
to the employment of guano, which is but 
little used so far as I have seen. I have 
myself seen but little thorough draining, 
though in many districts it is begining to be 
pretty extensively employed. Some fields I 
have seen which evinced its benefit in a very 
interesting manner, in the worst period of 
the drouth last summer. The number of 
draintile machines sold at the time of the 
Exhibition of German Industry here, was very 
large I learn—good evidence that the prac¬ 
tice finds followers here as well as every¬ 
where, when attention is called to it. One 
sees irrigation of grass land, I may almost say, 
wherever it can be done; and it was with no 
little satisfaction that during the late severe 
season, when the whole earth else seemed 
parched and dried up, that I wandered 
through many a.beautiful, green meadow to 
examine the method by which it was en¬ 
riched and watered. The methods are so 
various and so simple that it is hardly worth 
while taking up space to discribe them, yet 
so effective, that if you are not now im¬ 
pressed with the value of the practice, I must 
commend it to your attention. 
To the political circumstances of the 
countries of Europe does German agricul¬ 
ture owe its peculiarities, more than to any¬ 
thing else. The bauer has by no means fully 
recovered from the oppression of the feudal 
system. His education is very incomplete, 
in many countries being confined almost to 
the catechism. Such a thing as for a poor 
man to have his farm all in one piece is un¬ 
known ; it usually is divided up into one-quar¬ 
ter to one-half or one acre patches, and scat¬ 
tered over the whole village, the different 
pieces often stuck about here and there over 
the area of a square mile. 
Sugar from the Indies is made to pay such 
an immense tariff, that the cultivation of the 
beet for sugar becomes a valuable source of 
profit. The high price of oil for all purposes, 
greatly elevated above what it would other¬ 
wise be by tariff and tax, induces, indeed re¬ 
quires, the home production of oil for the 
table, for burning, and for technical appli¬ 
cations ; thus, in addition to hemp and flax, 
the rape, the poppy, and several other oil- 
yielding seed-crops, are made common. 
So it is throughout, that these relations of 
the wants of the community to the agricul¬ 
tural portion, of the land itself to other lands, 
and of the people themselves to their own 
country and its laws, give rise to differences 
in agricultural practice, which it is exceed¬ 
ingly interesting to observe, and though one 
may be never so familiar with what has been 
written on the subject, perhaps not uninter¬ 
esting to consider again. 
MASON C. WELD. 
Great Sale of .Tack Stock. —The sale of 
jacks and jennets, imported recently from 
Spain by the Kentucky Importing Com¬ 
pany, took place at Georgetown, Ky. The 
prices were remunerative, ranging from 
$395 to $1,550 per head, with the exception 
of one which sold at $235. The purchasers 
were from Scott, Bourbon, and Woodford 
counties. 
Pine Grove, Ity., Jan. 19, 1855. 
I notice a piece in the Agriculturist of the 
3d inst., written by L. F. A., in which my 
name is introduced, and as he has only taken 
a scrap of what I said some years ago in a 
letter to Mr Howard, he has put me in a false 
position, which I wish to rectify. 
In 1783,Matthew Patton, Ringold& Gough, 
then merchants of Baltimore, imported a 
parcel of cattle from England. Matthew 
Patton afterwards moved to Kentucky, and 
brought with him his division of these, which 
consisted of the Short Horn bull Mars, and 
the Short Horned cow Venus. The cow 
died, having left but one bull calf in Ken¬ 
tucky. There was afterwards brought to 
Kentucky, the Short Horn bull Pluto, pur¬ 
chased of Mr. Miller, who had become the 
owner of the remainder of the importation 
of Messrs. Patton, Ringold and Gough. I 
do not know what Mr. Harrison means by 
the term brindle, [probably a deep roan col¬ 
or.— Eds. Am. Ag.] applied to him ; it can not 
have the meaning I attach to the term. 
Pluto was a deep red. These cattle were 
called “ milk breed” in Kentucky, to distin¬ 
guish them from another portion of Patton 
& Co.’s importion. There were imported 
with the Short Horns a lot of cattle called 
the “ beef breeds.” These cattle had the 
largest frames I have ever seen. Were 
large-boned, coarse-jointed, and were six or 
seven years in getting their growth. These 
cattle, although purchased and bred by Mr. 
Miller, were called the “ Patton stock,” from 
the original importers, Matthew Patton & 
Co. 
i ; You thus see how two kinds of cattle, pos¬ 
sessing very different characteristics, were 
called by the same name. And these bad 
bulls were called “ Patton bulls,” although, 
so far as my knowledge extends, I do not 
believe Mr. Patton himself ever bred his 
Short Horn crosses to any of the “ beef 
breed ” bulls. A son of Matthew Patton, 
brought to Kentucky a bull that was a cross 
of the “ beef breed,” and Matthew Patton 
himself brought some heifers with him that 
were from both milk and beef breeds from 
common cows. I have nothing to do with 
the circumstance of their names, for surely 
“ beef breed ” was a bad name for these 
coarse cattle, for they could hardly be fat¬ 
tened at all. 
I still have and am breeding descendants 
of the “ Patton stock,” but unfortunately 
they have crosses of these “bad bulls,” but 
in which there is no trace observable, as 
they have been bred to good bulls ever since 
1817, [meaning, we supsose, good Short 
Horn bulls.— Eds. Amer. Ag.] and they have 
still transmitted their milking qualities to 
their decendants. 
Now, whatever qualities were desirable in 
the “ Patton stock,” they got fromhhe Short 
Horn portion of his importation. 
SAM. D. MARTIN 
I would not willingly do Dr. Martin the 
slightest injustice in speaking of his connec¬ 
tion with the “ Patton stock.” He has set 
the matter right, as regards himself, in the 
above letter ; and its closing sentence tells 
the whole story regarding what good quali¬ 
ties they now possess in his hands. He, as 
I understand, has crossed them for many 
years back with well-bred Short Horn bulls. 
Of course, they are, so far as he is concern¬ 
ed, essentially Short Horns —the “ Patton ” 
blood being bred mostly out, and the “ milk- 
ink quality” of their descendants perpetu 
ated, as, I think, quite as much through the 
Short Horn crosses as otherwise. Nor do I 
