1869.1 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
13 
younger the animal the more rapidly it gains. 
Thus, taking the mean of the two experiments, 
it required the first fortnight onlyJ'Is lbs. of 
milk to produce one pound of increase of ani¬ 
mal, and more than 11 lbs. of milk the second 
fortnight, or over 65 per cent more. 
I iiope the experiments will be continued un¬ 
til the pigs are fat enough for the butcher. 
Four weeks is not long enough to give ns all 
the facts required. These are the only experi¬ 
ments I know of directly bearing on the point, 
but it seems clear to my mind that there is an 
immense advantage in getting animals to eat, 
digest, and assimilate a large amount of food, 
for the simple reason that it takes a very large 
proportion of the food to sustain the vital func¬ 
tions, and all the growth of the animal is de¬ 
rived from the food eaten in excess of this 
amount. I believe this is now the most im¬ 
portant point to which breeders can direct their 
attention. The amount of offal in well-bred 
animals has been reduced by skillful breeding 
to a minimum. Now let them aim to increase 
the digestive powers. Said an experienced 
dairyman, “I never knew a cow that was a 
great milker- that was not a great eater.” This 
is my idea exactly. And what we want is 
a breed that will eat 25 or 50 per cent more in 
proportion to live weight than any animals we 
now have. They would, in proportion to the 
food consumed, grow twice as fast as they now 
do. I have very little doubt as to the truth of 
1 his proposition; and if it is true, the sooner it 
is acknowledged and acted on by our breeders 
the better. 
I got a letter this morning; from the managing 
editor of the Agriculturist calling for “ more 
copy,” and earlier. “ You country folks,” he 
says, “ ought to pass a few months in New 
York in winter to get a little go in you.” New 
York is a very pleasant place to visit for a few 
days, but a whole winter! Not if I know it. It 
is a fact, however, that these New Yorkers ac¬ 
complish an immense amount of work in a 
given lime. People in the country think they 
have enough to do, but we do not work half as 
hard as they do in a large citju They earn all 
tiiat they get, and sometimes do not get all tjiat 
they earn. It is the “ pace that kills.” We are 
all inclined to go fast enough. Steady work is 
what counts, and you will find that the men who 
have accomplished the most in life are generally 
“ country folks.” 
Last spring I intended to get 4 tons of Peru¬ 
vian guano to put on 20 acres of potatoes, but 
the freight from New York to Rochester was 
$22 per ton, and I gave up the idea. A few 
weeks after, when it was too late to sow the 
guano, the freight was reduced to $8.00 per ton. 
Our potatoes are sent to New York, mostly by 
railroad. My crop did not average, for want of 
manure, over 75 bushels per acre. The freight 
on this to New York would be about $20, or 
$400 on the 20 acres. Now I have no sort of 
doubt that 400 lbs. of guano per acre would 
have given a crop of 200 bushels per acre, and 
the freight on this would be about $53 per acre, 
or $1,060 on the 20 acres. In other rvords, if 
Vanderbilt Avould have brought me 4 tons of 
guano for $32 instead of charging $88, he would 
have received $1,060 for carrying back the pota¬ 
toes, instead of $400. If railroad companies 
understood this matter they would transport 
manures at the lowest possible rates. I have 
known the application of one ton of superphos¬ 
phate on 5 acres of turnips to increase the yield 10 
tons per acre, or 50 tons, and one ton of guano 
will sometimes give an increase of 18 tons of po- 
taloes. They can afford to carry a ton of super¬ 
phosphate or guano at a cheap rate in the spring, 
for the purpose of getting 50 tons of turnips, 
or 18 tons of potatoes to carry back in the fall. 
The trustees of one of our agricultural colleges 
told me that they could get ten literary and sci¬ 
entific professors easier than they could get one 
for the department of agriculture. And I notice 
that “ one of the foremost colleges of the coun¬ 
try ” is advertising in the newspapers for a 
“ Professor of Agriculture.” This is rather hard 
on the trustees. I am ver/ sorry for them. 
I do not know what college it is that is adver¬ 
tising for a Professor of Agriculture, but I pre¬ 
sume they will get scores of applicants! It will 
not be an easy matter to make a selection, and 
the better way -would be to put the names in a 
hat and draw out one, and let this be the success¬ 
ful candidate! The chances are that he will be 
as good as any! Some years ago a city man 
who had dabbled a little in chemistry asked me 
to recommend him as Professor of Agricultural 
Chemistry to a newly started Agricultural 
College. I forget whether I complied or not. 
He knew nothing or next to nothing about agri¬ 
cultural chemistry, but as there are few people 
that know any more, I told him I thought he 
would probably do as well as the next man. He 
applied for the place. The trustees met, and it 
appeared that there were two candidates for the 
Professorship of Agricultural Chemistry, and 
none for the Professorship of Practical Agricul¬ 
ture. They made the appointments, and my 
friend came to me laughing and excited. “ Here’s 
a joke,” he said; “those people have appointed 
me ^Professor of Agriculture, and I don’t know 
what to do about it.” “Accept, of course,” I 
said. “ You are out of a situation, ancl jf you go 
down there something will turn up. Perhaps 
the other man will resign, and then you will 
probably be appointed to the chemical chair and 
will get along well enough.” “I’ll do it,” he 
said, “but it’s a great joke.” And so it was. 
He was a good fellow, but did not know a 
•SJhort-liorn from a Devon, or a Southdown from 
a Merino, and it may well be questioned if he 
knew wheat from barley. His whole life had 
been spent in the city, and he was not to blame 
for knowing nothing about farming. But the fun 
of the joke is that he is to this day, or was the 
last time I heard of him, Professor of Agriculture 
in one of our prominent agricultural colleges, 
and a writer for one of our agricultural papers. 
And, truth to tell, he writes as well and knows 
as much about farming as the editor himself. 
These matters will right themselves by and 
by. Agricultural Colleges will endure much 
tribulation, but there is a necessity for them, 
and they will ultimately prove eminently useful 
and be established on a permanent basis. At 
present, too much is expected from them by one 
class of people, and too little by others. The 
Professor of Agriculture should be a practical 
man and a man of good common sense. The 
more he knows of science and the less he says 
about it the better. It is not his province to 
tell the class how crops grow, but to show 
how to grow them. Let the chemist teach 
chemistry, and the farmer, farming. There are 
not ten men in the world who can teach both. 
Let the Agricultural Professor teach the young 
men how to clean a horse, how to bed him, when 
to water and feed him, how much he will eat, and 
what is the best food. And so with cows, sheep, 
and pigs. Fancy my old city friend a Professor 
of Agriculture, talking about such things to his 
class, and going on the nigh side of a cow to 
milk her, and suddenly finding himself, milk- 
pail and gold spectacles, upset by a protesting 
kick. But a really practical, intelligent man 
could teach any young farmer a good deal about 
such matters that would prove very useful to him 
in after life. So in regard to plowing, harrow¬ 
ing, and cultivating. There is great need for the 
exercise of a little common sense about these 
ordinary operations. There is a chance for great 
improvement in the common methods of doing 
them. Why should a man plow when the same 
effect can be obtained at half the cost by the 
use of a cultivator ? And why need a man waste 
half his time driving two horses on a harrow or 
cultivator when he can just as easily drivo 
four and do double the work, or do it a great 
deal deeper and better ? Let whatever is done 
on the farm or in the garden be done in the best 
manner. Let not a weed grow. Sow no crop 
unless the ground is in good order. If a field 
intended for winter wheat cannot bo got into 
good condition, give up sowing the wheat, and 
plow and cultivate the land two or three times 
in the fall, and sow it to barley the next spring. 
Better have a good crop of barley than a poor 
crop of wheat—better far for the land, and a 
good example for the boys. Nothing is more im¬ 
portant than to teach them not to expect good 
crops without good preparation. Let them know 
that there is no royal road to farming, and that 
there is more hope of improving old processes 
than of discovering new ones that shall revo¬ 
lutionize our system of agriculture. Let them 
know, however, and, what is more important, 
let them see, that it is just as easy to raise 30 
bushels of wheat per acre as 15, just as easy to 
raise 150 bushels of potatoes as 75, and ten timed 
more profitable. A little figuring would con¬ 
vince any one of the fact, and yet few farmers 
understand it, because they think about gross 
receipts and not about the profits left after de¬ 
ducting the expenses. 
I am always glad to answer inquiries about 
farming. I believe this is true of all the other 
editors of the Agriculturist. But they have the 
advantage of me. They get theif letters prompt¬ 
ly, while letters intended for me, sent to New 
York, are sometimes delayed. I received a 
batch to-day. One gentleman wants to know 
what tedder it was I saw at the Michigan Agri¬ 
cultural College,—an inquiry which isnow rather 
out of date. Another wants to know “ if the 
field that yielded 50 bushels of barley per acre 
was the same field I wanted to raise a good 
crop of corn off, alluded to in the May Agricul¬ 
turist, 1867.” It was the same field. Owing to 
the drouth the corn was not as heavy as I ex¬ 
pected, but the clean culture and the previous 
manuring told on the barley. And the wheat 
sown after- it this fall looked well when the 
winter set in. He wants to sow superphosphate 
on his barley next spring, on a corn stubble 
plowed this fall, and wishes to know how to 
apply it. Sow it broadcast before drilling in 
the seed. Better sow half superphosphate and 
half Peruvian guano, say 300 or 400 lbs. of the 
mixture per acre. At the present price of bar¬ 
ley it will pay well to use a mixture of guano 
and superphosphate for this crop. Another 
gentleman, whose letter is dated Cleveland, 
Tennessee, wants to know all about underdrain¬ 
ing, and also about liming land for wheat. This 
is too much of a good thing, and if I com¬ 
menced to talk about underdraining I should 
never stop. Old John Johnston used to tell his 
correspondents to commence draining in the best 
way they could, and then if they could not find 
out all they wauted to know, ho would help 
