1869.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
51 
the speed of the team does not materially affect 
the draft. Thus a plow, cutting a furrow four¬ 
teen inches wide and seven inches deep 
and going at the rate of lj miles an 
hour, required a draft of 484i lbs., while 
the same plow, cutting the same furrow 
at the rate of nearly 21 miles an hour, required 
only 500 lbs. One plowed an acre in 4 hours 
and 25 minutes, and the other in 2 hours and 39 
minutes. If I was a horse I would rather pull 
500 lbs. for 2 hours and 39 minutes than 484J lbs. 
for 4 hours and 25 minutes. As much work 
would be done in the one case as in the other, 
and done better, for the extra speed would stir 
the soil more thoroughly. The practical con¬ 
clusion is to put on three horses, if necessary, 
and never let a team walk slower than its natu¬ 
ral gait. Horses on the road frequently walk 
three miles an hour with a load. If they walked 
at the same rate in plowing, allowing a reason¬ 
able time for turning, etc., they would plow an 
acre in 2J- hours, with a furrow 14 inches wide. 
On my farm we do not plow an acre and a half a 
day, and yet men and horses seem to work hard 
enough. Why this discrepancy between facts 
and figures ? I think the main reason is owing 
to the stones. Not that I have such an unusu¬ 
ally stony farm, but that man and horses are 
never certain when the plow will strike, and 
consequently they have to go cautiously all the 
time. This, too, is the reason for the habit of 
putting the lines back of the shoulders in plow¬ 
ing—a practice which I most cordially detest. 
It is more important for a farmer to know 
how to get out stones, and to have energy and 
determination enough to do it, than it is to know 
all about the absorptive power of soils. 
Old horses that plow among stones are so 
afraid of being jarred that they will scarcely 
move. The wear and tear of harness, plows, 
cultivators, harrows, drills, &c., is certainly 
doubled on account of stones, and one would 
think that when a man gets a good rap on the 
ribs in striking a stone, he would be inclined to 
get it out. A sensible man will do so, a fool 
will swear at it and pass on. The one is just as 
angry as the other, but the one controls his 
anger and learns patience until he can remove 
the cause of his trouble; the other boils over 
and his anger escapes in jerks and blows on 
unoffending horses. 
One of my neighbors, who formerly did nearly 
all his work witli oxen, but who gave them up 
and bought a span of heavy Canadian horses, is 
about to return to the oxen. He says if you get 
the right kind and know how to manage them , 
they will do nearly or quite as much work as 
horses; they cost less; do not require so much 
care; there is no expense for harness; and they 
can be turned off to the butcher, generally with 
a profit. 
On a rough farm, where there arc stumps and 
stones, and more or less logging to be done in 
Winter, especially on swampy land, a yoke of 
cattle is indispensable. But when the farm is 
cleared of stones and stumps, horses, it seems to 
me, are more profitable. Our seasons are so 
short, and wages so high, that it is very desirable 
to push forward the work rapidly. There is a 
great difference in cattle, just as there is in 
horses, but, as a rule, horses will get over the 
ground faster than oxen. If two horses cannot 
walk along with a plow or harrow at a fair rate, 
put on three. 
The more I read of them, the more I am con¬ 
vinced that the Percheron horses, say half or 
three quarters blood, will prove to be just what 
American farmers need. When I read Mr. Du 
Huy’s charmingly written and interesting work, 
“ The Percheron Horse,” I feared, from his re¬ 
marks in regard to the climate of Perche (page 
89), that when bred here they might lose some 
of their energy. But I have just read an article 
in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society 
of England, which indicates that we need have 
no fear on this point. Our climate is vastly 
more stimulating than that of England, and if 
this breed does not degenerate there it certainly 
will not here. Mr. W. Dickenson, the writer of 
the article, than whose there is no higher au¬ 
thority, says if he had not gone to the Paris Ex¬ 
position in 1855, he “should have continued 
thinking there was no better class of farm horses 
in the world than the English.” But in the 
streets of Paris he saw a class of horses that 
“astonished” him. “These horses, walking so 
nimbly with great loads of stone, w T ere not so 
fat as our own favorites, but they seemed to me 
to be doing twice the work. Although leaner, 
they bore the strictest scrutiny; the more I saw 
of them, the more I admired them. Meeting 
Mr. Jonas Webb I called his attention to them. 
He said he had never seen such before; he had 
observed a horse taking into the show yard an 
immense load of provender, that astonished him 
beyond measure; he had resolved to try to buy 
him, but he lost sight of him that day and never 
saw him afterwards.” Mr. D. obtained a stall¬ 
ion which he called “ Napoleon,” and says: “ He 
has been at work on my farm ever since, almost 
always with mares. I have never had so good, 
quiet, active, and powerful a horse before. He 
is unlike our English cart-horses, for with great 
size (1G 1 1 a hands high) and immense substance, he 
shows a dash of blood. He has an Arabian 
head, not small, but of fine character, well pro¬ 
portioned to his size. The neck is very muscu¬ 
lar and -well turned, the shoulders large, very 
deep, without lumps on the sides, and oblique, 
—such a shape as would not be objected to for 
a riding horse; the bosom open, the fore leg3 
magnificent and very short, with great bone, hard 
sinews, and little hair upon them. His feet are 
perfect in shape, and perfectly sound in work , 
his back short, rather dipped, round-shaped ribs, 
large loins, rather plain, drooping hind-quarters, 
very large thighs, low down, and tightly joined 
together with prodigiously powerful,clean hocks, 
and very short hind legs, well under him. We 
never have had a difficulty with the engine or 
thrasher or with anything in the mud, that Nap 
could not extricate us from. His stock are as 
good and kind as possible. It is a saying with 
the men, that Nap’s colts need no breaking. My 
mares are small and active; the stock are con¬ 
siderably larger than the dams, but so cleanly, 
that as foals they look more like carriage 
horses.” 
It is very evident that the Perchefon stallion 
is what we want, to improve our race of farm 
horses. When grain and hay was cheap it did 
not make so much difference what kind of horses 
we kept, and how many of them. We could, 
perhaps, afford to let them lie idle half the time. 
But all this is now changed. Horse feed is ex¬ 
pensive, and wages of the teamsters high, and it 
is very important to keep none but the best 
horses and to study economy in using them. I 
have seen a farmer draw a load of only 22 bush¬ 
els of potatoes to the city, while another farmer, 
by having a large, double box, drew ever 50 
bushels. And even this is a small load—only 
2,800 lbs. for two horses. M. Du Hiiys, in “The 
Percheron Horse” (page 69), says : “ In London 
a traction of only 2,000 lbs. is required of a draft 
horse. In Paris the horses harnessed to the 
heavy stone carts are required to drag as much 
as 5,000 lbs. each , and often more.” And the tes¬ 
timony of Jonas Webb and W. Dickenson is to 
the same effect. In other words, a pair of Per¬ 
cheron horses draw a load of 5 tons, or more 
than 175 bushels of potatoes, or 166 bushels of 
wheat. It would take a farmer who goes down 
ten miles to the city with 22 bushels of potatoes a 
whole week to draw as many potatoes as a good 
span of horses would draw at one load. And 
as he pays 25 cents toll, and a man and team 
are worth $4 a day, the cost will be: 
fi days at $1.$24 00 
Toil. i go 
$25 50 
1 day and toll..... 4 25 
Saving in delivering 132bushels potatoes...20 25 
It is a well-known fact that dogs wag their 
tails, and a philosopher once computed the 
amount of power in the aggregate, lost to the 
world by this useless habit, and found that it 
was sufficient to turn half the grist-mills in 
Europe. If he should figure up all the power 
we lose on the farm in the year for want of a 
little thought, he would probably tell us it would 
be sufficient to dig in a week or two all the 
gold there is in California, and make us all 
rich. But, joking apart, if other manufacturers 
lost as much time and power as some farmers 
do they would soon be ruined. We lose time in 
every w T ay. We take a load to the city and 
come back empty, and then go empty to the 
city to bring back a load. We lose time in scrap¬ 
ing dirt on to a road, to raise it a few inches 
above the water, while half the labor in ditching 
would take the -water three feet below the road. 
We lose a great deal of time by being in a hurry. 
We have not time to oil the harness; to keep 
carriages clean and the nuts tight; to drive a 
hoop on a barrel or a pail when it gets loose ; 
to put up tools and implements; to plant fruit 
trees, or take care of them. We have never time 
to attend to the many little things of tiie farm, 
and we lose more by neglecting them than 
we can possibly earn at steady work. I have 
known a farmer to go, all alone, into the -woods 
to chop, and leave a stout hired man at home 
to attend to the stock and do chores ! 
Why Keep Up Interior Fences? 
It is a common statement among farmers, es¬ 
pecially in the Eastern States, and it is probably 
not a very exaggerated one, that it would cost 
more to-day to fence the farms in most counties 
than the land itself would sell for. This enor¬ 
mous amount of labor has been done gradually, 
and at seasons when there was little other work, 
and its great cost has not been felt. The annual 
cost of keeping fences in repair, and the labor 
required, all reduced to dollars and cents, as it 
ought to be, would constitute a more serious tax 
than most farmers would be willing to meet. 
And the question naturally arises, What is the 
use of all this? Why do we need so many 
fences? Pasture lands, of course, must be 
fenced, but in our opinion no others should be, 
or at least no others need be, except for the 
purpose of separating our meadows and culti¬ 
vated fields from our own pastures, from the 
public highway, and from a neighbor’s land. In 
expressing this opinion we base it, of course, on 
a conviction that mowing land should never 
be trodden by the hoof of an animal, except for 
purposes of fertilizing and harvesting the crop. 
The cost of making and repairing fences, 
after all, is only a small part of the argument 
against their excessive use. They are disad¬ 
vantageous in many -ways : 1. They shorten the 
furrow and require much time to be lost in 
turning plow-teams, etc. 2. They cut up the 
