282 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[August, 
yard at regular stores_The “Prairie Whistle,” so- 
called, is a little instrument to place in the mouth, and 
l)y blowing on it, imitate the songs of birds. The circu¬ 
lar accompanying this little toy is, perhaps, rather loud 
in its praises of the whistle, but we do not class it as a 
humbug. We have one in our possession, and have no 
doubt that, with practice, the notes of many birds might 
be imitated_’We are again called upon to mention the 
“Howard Association ” and the “Doctors” associated 
there for the cure of disease. We unreservedly pro¬ 
nounce thorn unsafe, and advise all to shun them if they 
would keep well_Among the lotteries proper we have 
to mention ns being particularly active just now, E. 
S. Barker & Co.. Lewis & Co., Hunt, Anthony & Co., 
and S. W. Waters & Co., all of New York_We know 
nothing about J. Arthurs Murphy, or his business direc¬ 
tory, but his circulars arc decidedly quackish.—In these 
days of summer heat, when the thermometer sports 
among high figures, humbug hunting is a little tedious. 
AVe have our eye, however, on two or three precious 
dens that will receive our attention as soon as we have a 
little leisure from the press of other business, and the 
weather will permit. Meanwhile, we warn all persons 
to avoid every thing that promises riches and great gains 
without labor. 
'i'Bic Fail* B-it-t. —The Agriculturist goes to 
press so early that our August number can not be ex¬ 
pected to contain a very full list of the fairs. We give, 
however, many of the most important ones, and shall 
publish a much fuller list next month. Old Massachu¬ 
setts is a model State in many particulars, and we pre¬ 
sume we owe it to Mr. C. L. Flint, the thoughtful Secre¬ 
tary of the State Board of Agriculture, that the public 
has every year a complete list of all the county and local 
fairs of any importance, published in June, or perhaps 
earlier. The Secretaries of State Agricultural Societies, 
and of Boards of Agriculture, ought to follow this lead. 
The result would be that the attendance at the fairs 
would be greatly increased; that there would be less 
clashing of interests and fewer fairs occurring on the 
same days; and that exhibitors who wish to go from fair to 
fair would be informed where they occur in time to make 
provision to have the agent’s work for the months of 
September and October all laid out. Besides, the fairs 
would be much better advertised, and the interests of 
improved agriculture greatly promoted. We make our 
annual bow to Mr. Flint—this time, in public. 
JPm*e Water from F»asl Wells.— 
John Taylor, of Maine, writes that he has a well ten feet 
from his house, and seventeen feet from this his neigh¬ 
bor's drain empties, and the water does not run off. The 
water used to be good, now it is bad, flat, and full of in¬ 
sects of different kinds. He has cleaned it out to little 
purpose. The question is, Can the open cesspool affect it? 
—Certainly; why not ? The soil is porous, the well prob¬ 
ably a shallow one. At first, the soil purified the drain 
water that found its way through it; now channels have 
probably been made, so that the flow is more direct, and 
ns it soaks into the ground, it goes more directly towards 
the well, and the soiF being already saturated with the 
“ stuff,” it no longer purifies the water. The well ought 
to be very thoroughly cleaned out, wooden curbing re¬ 
moved, or renewed if it is used, and the fact demonstra¬ 
ted that the impurity arises from no cause in the well it¬ 
self. Do this, to the satisfaction of any reasonable man, 
and then appeal to your kind neighbor to carry his sink 
drain clear away down hill somewhere. If he does not 
do it, he can. be indicted as maintaining a nuisance, for 
]ia may be actually poisoning his neighbors. 
B>estroyimg- Oierry Trees.— “A. C.,” 
Dalilonega, I®wn, lias several Morello cherry trees which 
sprout from the root. He wishes to kill the trees, root 
and branch, and has been told that girdling would do it. 
We should not think that girdling would stop the trouble 
from the roots. Cutting down the trees and grubbing 
out the roots will doubtless be required. 
BJnele .Bolin's Flower <jJ»tJierer.s. 
By Jane Jay Fuller, N. Y. It is not often that we meet a 
popular work on botany which steers so clear of errors as 
this does. We might point out faults, but where there is 
such an evident intention to be right we commend the 
work as one calculated to create a taste for the study of 
plants. 
Coiumcrciitl Ferflilizers iu Maine. 
—The value of high-priced commercial fertilizers de¬ 
pends almost altogether upon the amount of soluble and 
of insoluble phosphoric acid, ammonia, and potash, they 
contain, provided they arc in the condition of a fine pow¬ 
der or easily reduced to powder. Few fertilizers contain 
much potash, as it is easier supplied in unleached as 
well as iu leached ashes, and is, besides, generally pres¬ 
ent in tolerably large quantities in the soil. Iu Maine, 
the last Legislature ncting upon these facts, passed a law 
requiring every package of any fertilizer to be marked 
with the percentage of soluble and of insoluble phos¬ 
phoric acid and of ammonia, which the fertilizer con¬ 
tains. Penalties are fixed for neglect to do this, and for 
the fertilizers not coming up to the statement. The 
practical working of the law after the present trial year 
will bo regarded with great interest. 
BSotidsisis—'fi'w® Eg'g'S a —“J. 
D. C.,” of Cleveland, sends a statement, clipped from the 
Cleveland Plaindealer, about some wonderful Houdans 
which lay 2 eggs a day regularly. The statement has no 
doubt stretched the truth, nens sometimes lay two eggs 
in one day, but it is safe to say no pair of hens ever did 
it uniformly, as is clearly to be inferred from the article. 
This breed is famous for laying and for the table,—a sort 
of combination of the characteristics of the Gray Dork¬ 
ing and Black Spanish, with hardiness which neither 
has. They do not sit. 
BBiill Bffai’aacss.— W. Sharp, of Moniteau 
Co., Mo., promptly responds to our call for a description 
of a good bull harness. We thank him, and want to hear 
from others. He writes as follows: “ For a cart harness 
take a regular horse cart harness, with low-top liames, in¬ 
vert the collar and liames, and beat it if you can. For plow 
or wagon use, harness to match; for bridle, use the com¬ 
mon 5-ring halter, either with a bit in the mouth secured 
to the side-rings by snaps or straps, or, as I prefer, with 
no bit, and snap your lines in the side-rings of the halter, 
and you can guide by the nose-band any well-broken ani¬ 
mal, double or single. Thus geared, a good bull is a 
splendid leader wherever he ought to be used, and that is 
anywhere that walking is the gait required.” 
? Tlie Comet; or, tlie Earth in its 
Varied Phases, Past, Present, and Future. New 
York : E. J. Hale & Son. This book is a conundrum, 
and we give it up. Possibly the author knew what he 
was writing about; we do not. 
Steam Flowing: in New .Jersey.— 
Col. Patterson, the owner of a large tract of land in New 
Jersey, made an exhibition of a Steam Plowing Appa¬ 
ratus lately imported. The Commissioner of Agricul¬ 
ture and a number of other distinguished invited guests 
were present. Among them not one representative of 
the press, whose name we recognize. However, those 
who saw the trial report most favorably. Two engines 
were employed; these traveled freely over the soft 
ground, went for wood and water, and took positions 
with entire ease and precision. They drew back and 
forth between them a double gang of 12 plows; G were 
in the ground at work, and 0 were held up, and 
put into the ground on the return. Each trip across the 
field, which was about a quarter of a mile long, plowed 
G furrows 13 inches wide and S inches deep, much faster 
than a pair of horses could go with a single plow, mak¬ 
ing the same-sized furrow. The plow used is Fowler’s, 
t he one alluded to in a basket item on Steam Plows in this 
number. Besides this apparatus of Col. Patterson’s, 
there are, we believe, but two others in tills country, one 
in Illinois and one in Louisiana. 
The ILiie ofl" q¥<>E>u «¥simes Audu¬ 
bon. Edited by his widow. N. Y. : G. P. Putnam & 
Son. Thero was so much of romance about Audubon's 
life that the barest recital of its incidents must be of in¬ 
terest. We have here a small installment of the memoirs 
which the distinguished naturalist and artist left, and are 
encouraged to hope for more. A charming book for 
those who can appreciate it. 
The Steam Flow. — John J. B. Frink, 
Esq., Pleasantville, Pa. The best steam plow is by 
Mr. John Fowler, of Leeds, Eng. The system is a per¬ 
fect success, and more than five hundred sets of the ap¬ 
paratus are in regular use in England alone. They arc 
also used to a considerable extent in other parts of Great 
Britain, and largely in the cotton fields of Egypt. The 
price of the apparatus which won the prize cup offered 
by the Viceroy of Egypt at the last show of the Eoyal 
Agricultural Society of England (for the apparatus best 
adapted for use in foreign countries, to which transporta¬ 
tion is expensive, and where repairs are not easily made,) 
is £708. Its cost, delivered here,—the duties on steam 
plows having been temporarily remitted,—would bo 
rather more than $5,000 of our currency. The rolling 
prairie country of Missouri is much better suited for the 
use of the steam plow than the majority of the land on 
which it is used in England, and (here is no reason why 
its introduction there should not be entirely successful. 
On such land the area plowed in a day should average 
ten acres, while of stubble land fully twenty-five acres 
should be thoroughly broken up to a depth of nino or 
ten inches with the grubber or cultivator, which does 
even better work than the turning plow used for grass 
land. Concerning the amount of fuel and the number 
of hands, wo arc not able to give precise information. 
The work can probably be done for about one-fourth the 
cost of horse plowing, and done very much more thor¬ 
oughly. Fuel would probably not be much more costly 
in Missouri than in England, but manual labor is higher 
and horse feed is cheaper; consequently the saving would 
be somewhat less. The greater efficiency of the work, 
however, and the advantage of being able to perform 
it more rapidly and more thoroughly, seem to argue 
that great benefit would result from the introduction of 
the system in the broad fields of our Western States. 
'I’5so American "Woman's ISomc ; or 
Principles of Domestic Science. By Catherine E. Beecher 
and Harriet Beecher Stowe. That two such distinguish¬ 
ed authors as C. E. B., and II. B. S. should write a work 
prepares one to praise it in advance. There is much 
that is good in the book, though it is withal rather 
“ preachy.” Much of the matter we recollect to have seen 
elsewhere. We are surprised that ladies, cither of whose 
names would sell any book to which it was attached, 
should allow their work to appear in the contemptible 
manner of being “ sold only by agents.” Catherine E. 
Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe are, in a sense, 
public property. Whatever they may write is wortli 
reading, and their productions should not be exclusively 
in the hands of book peddlers. 
The Pl'eshaimock or “ Mesiia.it- 
nock” Potato.— W. C. Henderson, Meadville, Pa., 
writes: “In your paper for June, on page 203, you use 
the following language in reply to a correspondent from 
Utah: ‘ The Meshannock, at the East, is known as the 
Mercer and Chenango.’ The potato to which you proba¬ 
bly refer originated sixty years since with Mr. John 
Gilkey, who lived on the Neshannock Creek, five miles 
above its junction with the Shenango River, at Newcas¬ 
tle, the seat of justice for Lawrence Co., Pa. To this 
potato Mr. Gilkey, in good taste, gave the aboriginal 
name of the beautiful stream on the bank of which he 
lived. James Clarke, then of Baltimore, and Beven 
Pearson, merchant of Mercer, each took samples of the 
new potato in his saddle-bags, one to Baltimore, the 
other to Philadelphia. The people, not familiar with the 
name given by Mr. Gilkey, called them Mercers, as they 
were from Mercer Co. The object of this communica¬ 
tion is to have this noble potato relieved of the spurious 
names with which it is loaded. Tell your readers that 
tlie name is not Meshannock, Mercer, or Chenango, but 
Neshannock. The potato has been without a rival for the 
last sixty years, and has a fair prospect of retaining the 
same proud position for sixty years to come.” 
J’cnr ISBig-iif. — “ R.,” Amherst, Mass., 
writes the following: “I noticed in your last issue of 
the Agriculturist a paragraph from your correspondent 
‘ Bonne de Jersey,' giving his experience in the treat¬ 
ment of pear blight, and calling for a ‘ remedy.’ Hav¬ 
ing had some little experience in pear culture, I feel 
called upon to offer a suggestion, so simple that it may 
provoke a smile from the incredulous. I observed, some 
years since, among a row of very thrifty pears, a Bartlett 
turning black; the leaves and the short spur limbs turn¬ 
ing to a crisp, as if burnt with fire ; the trunk soon turned 
black on the side which was exposed to the sun’s rays. 
I pointed out the tree to a nurseryman of considerable 
experience in horticulture. After examining the tree 
carefully, he told me to ‘ cut off all the parts which seemed 
affected by the blight, and give the tree a good coat of 
soft soap, diluted, and let it dry on the tree.’ Somewhat 
incredulous at so simple a remedy, I followed the pre¬ 
scription. The tree, in a few months, seemed to gain ; 
the next season all the old black bark rolled tip, and 
new, healthy bark formed, and the tree is now as vigorous 
and healthy as any tree that I have. I have since experi¬ 
mented with like success. All I have to say to veteran 
pear culturists is, to try it.” 
Coinmci'ciiil Fertilizers in 4’ois- 
nectlcut.— The Secretary of the Connecticut State 
Board of Agriculture, Mr. T. S. Gold, submitted to Prof. 
S. W. Johnson, 1G numbered samples of fertilizers taken 
from the stocks of dealers in different parts of the State, 
and the Professor has reported on their composition. 
Some of the facts shown are very interesting. Nine ma¬ 
nures called “Superphosphates” contain the following 
percentages of soluble phosphoric acid (the characteristic 
constituent), viz.: none, 3.10, 7.91, 12.88, 3.93, 0.30, 0.79, 
1.38, 5.75. The percentage of ammonia varies in about 
the same degree, taking the samples in the same order, 
viz. : 1.G8, 2.42, 2.S0, 4.132, 3.52, 2.59, 0.G3, 3.2S, 2.04. This, 
is enough to show that the buyers of these manures, de¬ 
pending upon the honesty of dealers and upon both the. 
