AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
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AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, THE MOST USEFUL, AND THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN —WASHINGTON. 
ORANGE JUDD, A. M., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
mt. 
$1.00 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. 
SINGLE NUMBERS lO CENTS. 
VOL. XVI.— No. 7 ] 
NEAT-YORK, JULY, 1857. [New series-No. 126. 
^Business Office at IVo. 191 Water-st. 
^For Contents, Terms, &c. see page 168. 
SyNotesto Correspondents, pages 164-5. 
iSPJFor Business Notices, see page 165. 
jgfTor Advertisements, seepages 167. 
WORK EOIi THE MONTH. 
“ Nor must we pass untold, what arms they wield 
Who labor tillage, and the furrowed field ; 
The crooked plow, the share, the towering hight 
Of wagons, and the carts unwieldly weight; 
The sled, the tumbrel, hurdles, and the flail, 
The fair of Bacchus with the flying sail. 
These all must be prepared, if plowmen hope, 
The promised blessing of a bounteous crop.” 
What a change has come over the art of 
tillage since Virgil sung his Georgies, and 
described the implements of Roman hus¬ 
bandry, and their various uses! One can 
hardly realize it, until he puts the drawings 
of the ancient plow beside the modern one, 
in all its varieties, adapted to every kind of 
soil, to every kind of location, and every 
crop. It is profitable to look back, at times, 
and to see what progress has been made in 
the cultivation of the farm crops, and 
what great improvements science has brought 
jo his aid. Virgil, in describing the plow, 
gives this advice to the farmer : 
“Young elms, with early force in copses bow, 
Fit for the figure of the crooked plow, 
Of eight feet long a fastened beam prepare, 
On either side the head produce an ear, 
And sink a socket for the shining share. 
Of beech, the plow tail and the bending yoke ; 
Or softer linden hardened in the smoke.” 
Such was the plowing gear of the ancients, 
simply a natural growth of wood fashioned 
by the farmer himself. The shining share 
was but a blunt piece of iron fastened to the 
crooked plow beam, and not doing its work 
so well as a single tooth of a modern cul¬ 
tivator. And yet this rude plow, scratching 
but few inches in depth, was hardly im¬ 
proved until the present century. Indeed, 
there was little division of the farmer’s labor 
until a quite recent period. The poet de¬ 
scribes a state of agriculture among the Ro¬ 
mans, in which the farmer is his own me¬ 
chanic,shaping his plow beam by anticipating 
his wants, and compelling the young sapling 
to grow into a shape suitable for a plow 
beam. The present generation can remem¬ 
ber that there was almost as little division of 
labor upon our own farms. The farmer 
made his own plow beams, fashioned the 
handles, and was only dependant upon the 
blacksmith for a plow share without a 
mold-board, for the clevis, and the irons of 
the yoke. There were no agricultural ware¬ 
houses, stored with all the tools that the 
farmer wished to use. He made his own 
ox-yokes, and bows, and pins, and usually, 
his own sleds and carts, with the exception 
of the wheels. Farmers’ tools were only 
made to order, and these of the rudest kind. 
Now, labor has been so far divided, that a 
farmer can find ready-made nearly every 
tool he wants to use upon his soil, and a 
great variety of tools that were unthought 
of fifty years ago. The plow is no longer a 
rude implement. It is the combined result 
of the highest scientific knowledge and prac¬ 
tical skill. Years of patient study and in¬ 
vestigation of the laws of mechanical force, 
have been spent upon it, so that it produces 
its results with the least expenditure of ani¬ 
mal strength. It is so constructed that it is 
easily guided, and the holder can plow nar¬ 
row or wide, deep or shallow, as suits his 
convenience. We have plows for various 
kinds of work,—for the sward and for the 
stubble, for the surface and for the sub-soil, 
for the side-hill and for the plain, those turn¬ 
ing a single furrow and those turning two. 
In looking at the changes which have 
come over our agriculture, none is more 
striking than that in the farmer him¬ 
self. He looks at his business from a new 
stand-point. It is no longer a stereotyped 
routine, in which man uses as little mind as 
the dumb cattle he drives over his fields. 
Among the more intelligent class of cultiva¬ 
tors, husbandry is no longer considered a 
perfected art. Its methods are not so well- 
established that it is deemed a waste of time 
and labor to try anything new. It is a ten¬ 
tative art, in which everjf man feels that he 
has much to learn, and experiments in new 
tools, crops, fertilizers, and modes of tillage 
are everywhere the order of the day. The 
practice of those who apply mind to hus¬ 
bandry, is gradually influencing that very 
large class who apply only muscle. They 
see the results of deep plowing, and high 
manuring, and, to some extent, imitate their 
thinking neighbors. This experimenting is 
everywhere practicable among the readers 
of our agricultural journals. This change 
in the farmer himself, we regard as the most 
important of all that has been done in agri¬ 
cultural reform. In it lies the germ of all 
future improvement, a work that is certain 
to go forward until the scientific principles 
of cultivation are everywhere recognized 
and practiced. 
Deeper tillage is another prominent fea¬ 
ture of modern husbandry. The plow has 
been constructed to meet this want of the 
soil. It has been discovered that the roots 
of cultivated crops take a much wider and 
deeper range than was formerly suspected. 
The soil is loosened and. fertilized to meet 
this necessity of the crops. Deep plowing 
is found to be a safeguard against the drouth 
of Summer. When the surface roots are 
parched, and no longer supply moisture, the,-, 
bottom roots still find an abundant supply in 
the well-ventilated subsoil. All thinking 
farmers plow several inches deeper than 
they did twenty years ago. 
The crops, too, that are cultivated, have 
felt the influence of this change. What a 
great variety of roots, grains, grasses, and 
fruits have been originated and brought into 
notice within the last twenty years. We 
have new kinds of corn, potatoes, oats, rye, 
wheat, apples, pears, and other fruits. Even 
the National Government has become inter¬ 
ested in the distribution of seeds, and the 
results of the improvements in European ag¬ 
riculture, are now put within the reach of 
multitudes of our best cultivators in all parts 
of the country. A single publisher has even 
gone beyond the government in the number 
of packages of seeds distributed, if not in 
the total amount. So wide is the distribution 
of these valuable seeds, that it is exceeding¬ 
ly difficult for designing men to get control 
of anything valuable for the purpose of spec¬ 
ulation. There is much less chance than 
formerly, for speculators to take advantage 
of the ignorance of farmers. A Rohan or 
Multicaulis or Sugar Cane fever is rendered 
impossible. The Dioscorea bubble bursts in 
its first season, and, “ like the baseless fabric 
of a vision,” leaves not a wreck of the bril¬ 
liant hopes of its originator behind. 
The stock upon the farms is as much im¬ 
proved as the crops. So strong has been 
the conviction of the necessity of full-blood¬ 
ed animals, to give a permanent character to 
our stock, that men of capital have visited 
the best breeders in England, and bought 
largely of their choicest animals, without 
regard to price. Stock breeding has fallen 
into competent hands, so that now we prob¬ 
ably have as fine Durhams, Devons, and Al- 
derneys, as can be found in the father land ; 
while we are not far behind in our horses, 
sheep, and swine. A passion for fine stock 
is rapidly spreading, and as agriculture be¬ 
comes more skillfully conducted, and better 
rewarded, farmers will have the means to 
gratify this laudable passion. Indeed, already 
the Durham and Devon stock is widely 
scattered, and more or less of full-blooded 
animals and grades may be found in almost 
every county where an Agricultural Society 
has been established. 
Another sign of progress is, the increased 
attention paid to the fertilizing of the soil. 
It is felt, as never before, that this is the one 
