AMERICAN AG-BIC U LT U BIST. 
153 
can estimate the number of animals which 
are rendered unhealthy and often lost from 
eating musty damaged hay 1 Who that has 
carried hay to market does not know that 
bright, green colored, well cured hay will 
bring two to five dollars a ton more than 
the same hay in a dark colored, '• banged,’' 
poorly cured condition. The feeding value 
of hay depends much upon the amount of 
sugar, starch and gum it contains, but in sun¬ 
drying much of these materials is changed 
to woody fibre. All of this is obviated by 
having a supply of cloth hay caps (umbrel¬ 
las), so that you can not only dry it in cocks 
despite rains and_ dews, but also take your 
own time for doing it. Let us estimate 
The cost and profit of Hay Caps. At 14 
cents a yard for the cloth, a cap 1Y yards 
square will cost 21 cents. The making can 
be done at odd spells, or on rainy cays, and 
this trifling cost need not be reckoned. A 
dozen of them, costing $2 52, will cover a ton 
of hay. They may be used, on an average, 
at least three times each season. If care¬ 
fully housed they will last ten years. This 
will be $2.52 for covers for 30 tons, or about 
8 cents per ton. Allowing 50 per cent for 
interest and storage, we have a cost of 
121 cents per ton, or a dollar for 8 tons. But 
we may double, or quadruple this estimate 
and the cost would then be but half a dollar 
a ton. 
Other uses of the caps. The caps provided 
for hay may also be used for covering wheat 
and other grains standing in shocks in the 
field. It will pay to provide them for this 
purpose alone. We have heard of their 
being used over corn. When used for 
this purpose, they are of course subjected to 
longer exposure and weather, and will not 
last as many years, but even then they will 
pay we think. 
Large caps for Wagons. —Several persons 
have used and recommended providing one 
or more large sheets to throw over loads of 
hay and grain in an emergency, aiid also 
over stacks necessarily left unfinished at 
night or interrupted by showers. The plan 
is doubtless a good one. 
We have thus spoken strongly in favor of 
hay caps, but we do not do so unadvisedly. 
From what we already know of their use, we 
have little doubt, that in less than a dozen 
years, they will be considered as essential 
to haying and harvesting as any other im¬ 
plement. now in use. We have letters—too 
numerous to publish—from those who have 
used them for years past, and they all con¬ 
cur in saying that they have more than paid 
their cost in a single year , and some have 
said “ during a single long rain.” We close 
by repeating the advice heretofore given, 
viz : try a few of them this year, and if 
your experience is so different from that of 
others, that you do not think they will pay, 
why the cloth will not be lost. Your wife 
will tell you that “cotton cloth never comes 
amiss, no matter what shape it is in.” 
Society, like shaded silk, must be viewed in all 
situations, or its colors will deceive you. 
The mind has more room than most people 
think, if we would hut furnish the apartments. 
ingersoll’s improved portable hay and 
COTTON PRESS. 
PRESSING- HAY I 1 ’UR MARK NT. 
There is an annual increase in the demand 
for hay, straw, &c., for use on ship-board, and 
also in our cities, where dry fodder is every year 
becoming scarcer and higher, owing to the ab¬ 
sorption of meadow fields as pasturage grounds 
for milch cows and other animals. The new 
facilities for transportation constantly being 
opened, render it much easier than formerly to 
bring in from a greater distance hay, straw, &c., 
and a good Press for reducing these substances 
to a compact form for transportation has come to 
be a great desideratum. These have been con¬ 
structed of various forms, but have generally 
been objectionable on account of their great bulk, 
difficulty of being removed from place to place, 
and the clumsy manner in which they are worked. 
Most of these difficulties have been obviated, how¬ 
ever, in a recently-improved Press, of which we 
give an illustration above. We have seen seve¬ 
ral of these Presses of different sizes, and worked 
one of them with much satisfaction. In the 
cut, the system of levers appears more compli¬ 
cated than it really is. When to be put in use, 
the pulling of a cord drops the lower platform to 
the bottom, when the front represented here as 
thrown down is closed up, and the hay pitched in, 
and the top shut down. A lever is then put into 
the iron socket on each side, and by simply work¬ 
ing the lever up and down, the lower platform is 
raised up with great force. When the material 
within the press is reduced to its smallest dimen¬ 
sions, the binding cords, which may be ropes, 
wooden withes, or annealed wire, (which is now 
coming into general use), having been previous¬ 
ly placed in the grooves in the side of the 
press, are bound around the bale. The cover 
is then thrown up, the front turned down, and 
the bale rolled out. The compactness of the ma¬ 
chine, the ease of transportation, the simplicity 
and continuous working of the levers, and the 
great power obtained, renders this machine 
worthy of attention. The same form of press is 
well adapted to pressing cotton and other sub¬ 
stances. Cannot farmers contrive to press straw 
into bales, and send it to us at a cheaper rate than 
we can now get it for—six cents for a “ bundle” 
no larger than one’s arm 1 These presses are of 
various sizes, and cost S50 to $125. Further par¬ 
ticulars may be obtained by referring to an adver¬ 
tisement elsewhere 
A TURNIP DISCUSSION, 
NO. I. 
The farmers of America seem to be “ all in a 
muddle” upon the subject of turnips. In England, 
the question is settled. Turnips are the sheet 
anchor of light soil cultivation, and the basis of 
the alternate system of English husbandry. It is 
the one great crop of the farm, and fills almost, if 
not quite, as large a place as maize does in our 
system of husbandry. It produces an enormous 
quantity of fodder, and makes beef and mutton 
abundant, and of excellent quality, and aids to a 
great bulk of manure. In short, turnips, coal and 
iron, are three strong material pillars of the British 
empire. The late Mr. Webster, in his last visit to 
Europe, made extensive observations of this crop 
among English farmers, and on his return to this 
country, frequently recommended it in his occa¬ 
sional speeches and writings. He also com¬ 
menced its cultivation upon his farm at March- 
field with eminent success. 
Many intelligent cultivators, especially those in 
the vicinity of our large cities, have experimented 
with it, and found it a paying crop for the purpose 
of fattening cattle. Turnips, we believe, are 
every year growing in favor in this country, and 
will eventually have a much more prominent 
place than they now hold, though we do not think 
it probable that they will form the basis of our 
agriculture, as they do in England. 
There is a class of conservatives, and very in¬ 
telligent farmers, who are entirely faithless as to 
the value of the crop, and ridicule its pretensions 
to any conspicuous place in a rotation for our 
soil. They tell us that the climate of England is 
entirely different from ours, the system or hus¬ 
bandry different, meat markets higher, and the 
crop that would prove highly remunerative there, 
will not pay here. They also inform us, with due 
gravity, that even if the crop would pay, it cannot 
be grown here with any sort of certainty, for they 
have tried it repeatedly, and failed. While the 
skies of England are perpetually dripping, and the 
climate cool, we have a clear, fierce sunlight in 
Summer, and frequent drouths, that make a turnip 
crop impossible. Other gentlemen of equal intel¬ 
ligence entertain sanguine views of the value of 
this root, and assure us of crops as abundant and 
as certain as the soil of England ever yielded. 
Where does the truth lie 1 What are we to ex¬ 
pect of the turnip cropl It would not be strange, 
if the opposite views we have here presented 
both should prove to be a little wide of the mark. 
The truth undoubtedly is, that the English climate 
is remarkably congenial to the constitution of this 
plant, and that their system of husbandry is cal¬ 
culated to make the most of it possible. Whether 
the quantity of rain falling there in a year be 
more or less than that which falls here, it un¬ 
doubtedly comes more frequently, and the clouds 
and fogs keep the soil in a much more uniformly 
moist and cool condition. There are not such ex¬ 
tremes as prevail with us. Then, as a rule, they 
cultivate their fields much deeper than we do, 
underdrain them, and use much larger quantities 
of manure. Though this bulb has nearly nineiy 
per cent, of water in its composition, it will not 
flourish in a poor soil. To get twenty-five or 
thirty tons from an acre of ground, as is common 
there, requires large quantities of manure. The 
English farmer does not hesitate to lay out 
twenty to fifty dollars in manuring and preparing 
a single acre for this crop, and finds that this ex¬ 
penditure pays much better than any les3 sum. 
So safe is this investment, and so uniform is the 
practice, that in case of change of tenants, little 
difficulty is found in estimating the value of a 
turnip crop yet upon the ground, or the increased 
