AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
12 
covering of snow will make them easily pass¬ 
able for the teams. When frost and snow 
render it practicable, the main party come with 
ox-teams and abundant supplies for man and 
beast, and work commences in earnest. The 
crews consist of twenty or thirty men, who 
have their assigned duties, and a cook. A 
skilled chopper will fell a tree with an ease and 
neatness that are wonderful to witness. No 
hunter is more fastidious about the points of a 
rifle than the chopper about those of his axe. 
The felled trunks are deprived of their limbs 
and bark, sawed into proper lengths, marked 
with the owner’s brand, and are hauled upon 
sled3 to the banks of the stream, and placed 
where they can be readily launched. With 
the breaking up of the ice in the streams, 
the work of the choppers ends, and a portion 
of the party return home with the teams, while 
others remain to “drive” the logs. Driving is 
the most exciting and hazardous, as well as the 
most laborious, portion of the work. The logs, 
committed to the swollen stream, go down with 
a rush, and it is the business of the drivers to 
follow them in a boat, and to be at hand to help 
them out of all difficulties. What with getting 
off those which run aground, and extricating 
those which become “jammed,” the driver has 
a lively time. Sometimes on the slippery logs, 
sometimes in the ice-cold water, and with but 
little rest, it is a task that can be performed only 
by the most robust. Where the stream suddenly 
narrows, a “jam” of the accumulated logs fre¬ 
quently takes place, and to break it up is 
often a very risky matter, as the starting of a 
single log may allow the whole mass to move, 
to the sure destruction of the drivers. Some¬ 
times where the jam takes place between the 
high banks of a streaVn, the men who are at 
work upon it have ropes attached to them by 
which they can be drawn out of harm’s way as 
soon as the logs start. The writer once saw 
upon one of the branches of the Penobscot a 
jam so firmly fixed that it resisted the attempts 
to blow it up by powder. In driving, the logs 
of various parties become mixed, and they are 
only separated when they arrive at the end of 
the drive, which is at the boom. The boom is 
made of trunks of trees chained together end to 
end. These stretch across the river, or from 
one massive pier to another. All the logs are 
caught by the boom, and those of each owner, 
as indicated by the marks, are collected to¬ 
gether. In Maine this is done by State officers, 
who receive a compensation regulated by law. 
From the boom to the saw-mill is the next 
step. Here the logs are converted into lumber, 
which, by various modes of conveyance, reaches 
the points at which it is consumed. As the 
great lumbering rivers of Maine flow directly to 
the sea, most of the lumber is rafted down to 
tide-water, and placed on shipboard. The en¬ 
gravings show the various steps here described, 
and need no other explanation than those given. 
Card tiie Cows. —One would think that 
any kind-hearted man, when he sees how grate- 
fid this operation is to a cow, would be willing 
to spend a few moments daily in carding her. 
It pays as well to clean a cow as a horse. All 
who have fairly tried it find great benefit from 
the operation. And yet not one farmer in a 
hundred makes it a practice to use the card or 
curry-comb in the cow-stable. We know stupid 
men who laugh at the idea as a mere notion of 
some fancy farmer. But, in point of fact, no 
cow can give the best results at the pail unless 
this matter is attended to, especially in winter. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 61. 
We have had very disagreeable weather for 
finishing up fall work. Much time was lost, and 
labor was very scarce and high. In this neigh¬ 
borhood one farmer paid men $1.75 per day for 
digging potatoes, women $1.50, and boys $1. 
Potatoes have brought a high price, but such 
wages take off the profits, especially with a 
poor crop. There are many fields this year that 
produced not more than 75 bushels per acre, and 
15 bushels of these were too small to sell. Now 
it costs nearly as much to dig such a crop as 
one which yields 175 bushels per acre. In 
point of fact, it costs more, for this reason: 
the good crop is clean and the land mellow; 
the poor crop is full of weeds, and it takes 
about as much labor to i[ig the weeds as to dig 
the potatoes. I have made up my mind never 
again to plant an acre of potatoes, unless there 
is a reasonable prospect of getting a good crop. 
It is impossible to pay such high wages unless 
we raise large crops. This is the great truth 
which we should fully understand and realize. 
There is no other way of making money by 
farming. Theoretically we all acknowledge 
this truth, but it is not so inwrought in our con¬ 
victions as to enable us to withstand all temp¬ 
tations to plant on land not in good condition. 
If farmers would raise as much as they now do 
on half the land —in other words, double their 
crops per acre—they would quadruple their 
profits. There would be no more to sell than 
now, and consequently no danger of glutting 
the markets and bringing down prices below the 
cost of production. We should spend far less 
for labor; should need fewer horses; there 
would be less wear and tear of implements; 
blacksmith and wheelwright bills would not 
count u^fso frightfully as they now do; we 
should not have to moil and toil from morning 
to night in getting in our scanty crops; we 
should have just as much produce to sell, and 
could keep double tl^i amount of stock; and 
our farms would become cleaner, richer, ancl 
more productive, year after year, instead of be¬ 
coming poorer and more weedy. 
Were I about to hire out to a farmer, I would 
look for one who raises large crops. Such a 
man would pay cheerfully and promptly; but a 
farmer who has to pay high wages for getting 
in a poor crop could hardly fail to be as cross 
as a bear. I often think of this matter in con¬ 
nection with the American Agriculturist. The 
expenses for editing, engraving, etc., would 
frighten the publisher of any ordinary journal. 
High salaries are paid, and paid with such 
cheerful promptness that it is a pleasure to 
work for its liberal-minded proprietors. The 
secret of the whole matter is: they raise enor¬ 
mous crops. If I raised three hundred bushels of 
potatoes per acre, I could pay two dollars a day 
for digging them more cheerfully than I now 
pay twelve shillings. It would not cost me 
over two or three cents a bushel to dig them, 
and now it costs me ten cents or a shilling. 
And though the Agriculturist pays me twice as 
much as any one else could afford to pay for 
the work done, yet it amounts to but a very 
little for each subscriber. 
Yes, I do want a new barn. I had a big 
crop of hay and was obliged to put more than 
half of it in stacks, and during this wet weather 
it gives me dyspepsia to look at them. Some 
farmers have more capital than faith; I have 
more faith than oapital. I have faith in good 
farming, faith in good stock, and faith in sub¬ 
stantial, but not expensive, barns. But those of 
us who are short of capital must get along tin 
best way we can. It will not do to fold our 
hands and bemoan our lot. Energy will over¬ 
come great difficulties, and little troubles dis¬ 
appear when looked full in the face by an earn¬ 
est man. I have two farming friends who are 
equally short of capital, and yet one gets along 
very well, and the other is running behind. 
His fences are all out of repair, the barn leaks, 
the doors are off the hinges, implements are 
scattered around, and the stock are allowed to 
run in the fields all winter, and eat at the straw 
stack, without as much as a board fence to shel¬ 
ter the shivering and half-starved animals from 
the pitiless storm. The other keeps things snug 
and in repair, and, not having money to build a 
barn for his cattle, he has constructed a shed 
with rough boards and covered it with corn¬ 
stalks, and his cattle and sheep, being regularly 
fed and carefully attended to, look as comfort¬ 
able and thrive as well as some'that are kept 
in an expensive barn. It is downright cruelty 
to let our animals be exposed to the wind in 
winter. There is none of us so poor that he 
cannot put up something that shall afford a shel¬ 
ter from the wind, if not from rain. 
Prof. Miles, of the Michigan Agricultural Col¬ 
lege, has sent me a pair of wild turkeys. The 
eggs were found in the woods this spring, and 
hatched under a hen. There were no domestic 
turkeys within miles, and they are undoubtedly 
genuine. The most striking difference between 
them and the domestic turkey is in the length 
and fineness of their legs. They look exactly 
like those figured in the American Agriculturist. 
for October, except *hat they have not yet got 
a tuft of hair on the breast. It is curious that, 
while the object of breeders is to reduce tin 
weight of bones, these wild turkeys should have, 
finer bones than the domestic turkey. The lat 
ter arrives at maturity earlier than the wild 
turkey, but with this exception, it would seem 
that very little improvement has taken place 
Dr. Miles has also favored me with a diagram . 
showing the results of his experiments on pig\. 
The general results are similar to those obtained 
in fhe first series of experiments, (see American 
Agriculturist for December 1867, page 440); that 
is to say, there is a remarkable decrease in the 
amount of food consumed in proportion to live 
weight as the animal grows old. Thus the aver¬ 
age amount of milk, reckoned in pounds, con¬ 
sumed for each pound of live weight was: 
ls< week. 2 d week. 3 d iceek. 4 th week. 
Experiment of 1866..3.96 3.3*2 2.92 2.49 
“ “ 18(58.. 3.90 4.42 2.95 2.57 
The gain for each 100 lbs. of live weight was • 
Is! week, 'id week. 3 d week. 4th week. 
Experiment of 1SC6. .75.86 11)3. 52.92 lbs. 28.20 lbs. 28.00 11)3. 
“ “ ISOS..86.00 •• 80.61 " 26.78 " 27.69 lb3. 
In other words, the pigs gained 86 per cent 
the first week, and only about 38 per cent the 
fourth week. The amount of milk consumed 
to produce one pound of increase was: 
Is! iceek. id iceek. 2d week. Mli week. 
Experiment I860_7.20 lbs. 7.02 11)9. ll.Sllbs. 10.13 lbs. 
1S08.6.53 " 7.10 " 12.52 *' 10.56 " 
These experiments were in progress when I 
visited the college, and it was very evident that 
no pains were spared to insure accuracy. There 
is no new point brought out by the second ex¬ 
periment, but it confirms the results obtained in 
1866, and we may accept as established facts, 
1st, That, up to a certain age at least, a young 
animal eats much more in proportion to live 
weight than an older one. Thus, for each pound 
of live weight, the pigs eat nearly 4 lbs. of milk 
the first week, and only about 2'| a lbs. the fourth 
week. 2d, That for the food consumed , the 
