66 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
letting the water on the rest. At the lower end 
of the lot, on the line of the Duke of Newcastle, 
is a waste-gate, through which any excess of 
water beyond what is wanted for irrigation and 
for working the wheel is carried off into the old 
bed of the river. 
Mr. Mellows, the farmer of that part of the 
Duke of Portland’s estate, invited us in, set on 
wine and beer, and the bread and cheese, and 
gave us an account of the experiment. It has 
been in operation twenty-five years. The land 
before produced nothing of any value. Imme¬ 
diately after tfie irrigation was commenced it 
produced great crops, and he thought then that 
it would not continue to do as well; could not 
see there was much manure in the water; be¬ 
lieved it was acting as a temporary stimulus 
only; but twenty-five years had passed, and 
there was no diminution, but rather an increase 
of the crop. Mr. Mellows showed us four and 
a half acres, from which he had just taken thir¬ 
teen loads of hay, as one of the four crops which 
this land produces; the first, in the spring, be¬ 
ing fed off, the next two mowed, and the last, in 
the fall, being fed off again. He said he thought 
the loads would weigh twenty-five cwt. each; 
that the last was on the cart, and that we could 
go and see it. We did so, and we thought he had 
over-estimated much; that it would give less 
than a ton of perfectly dried day, possibly not 
over eighteen cwt. But the crop was enormous 
at that, considered as only one of four crops in 
a year. Mr. Mellows dwelt, as well he might, 
on the value of this meadow as a means of en¬ 
riching his uplands ; said that with the manure 
made from the water-meadow, he was making 
all his farm (eight hundred acres) better every 
year, and that without buying manure, except 
bones for his turnips. 
We went from this to the upper water-mea¬ 
dow, which contains three hundred acres. The 
process here is much the same, except there is 
no occasion for raising drainage-water by arti¬ 
ficial means. This meadow extends along the 
river, I should think, from one to two miles. It 
is exceedingly beautiful, and produces, as the 
lower meadow does, four crops a year. We saw 
the bailiff who has charge of sixteen hundred 
acres which the Duke farms on his own account, 
and he told us the same story about the effect on 
the uplands; said they had done buying manure; 
that it had long been a rule to make the farm 
enrich itself, and that the crops of the whole 
were constantly improving since the draining 
and irrigation of the meadow. One important 
item, stated by Mr. Mellows, respecting the four 
and a half acres, from which he had just taken 
thirteen loads, I have inadvertently omitted. 
Mr. M. said that this was the first year after 
seeding; that he will expect less next year, and 
still less the third, by which time it will require 
new seed again; so that the produce of this year 
must be regarded as above the average. The 
crop on the whole of both meadows was large, 
as we very well knew, by seeing some parts of 
it standing, others in the cock, and others in the 
swath; and even the stubble, where the crop 
had been removed, indicated sufficiently to the 
practiced eye, that an immense crop had been 
taken off. 
After returning from an excursion over these 
and other estates, of not less than fifty miles, in 
which, among other curious things, we saw in 
one park twelve hundred deer feeding, and in 
another, rabbits beyond computation, Mrs. Mil- 
ward received us to an excellent supper ; after | 
which, despite a warm invitation to stay two or 
three days, we went on our way, exceedingly 
grateful for the kindness we had received. Mr. 
and Mrs. M.’s attentions, and exertions even, in 
behalf of us, strangers as we were, formed the 
conversation of many a mile, and will never be 
forgotten. 
All with whom I have conversed on the sub¬ 
ject of irrigation, agree that the land, if the 
subsoil be at all tenacious, should be under¬ 
drained. Some say it should be under-drained 
if the subsoil be ever so porous. This must be 
nonsense; for if the water passes freely off, what 
matters It Whether it pass in ai tiiiclal pipes, ui 
in the natural pores of the earth? Land with 
a porous subsoil never requires draining. 
The Duke of Portland’s improvements have 
been made at an enormous expense, apparently 
in the most expensive manner possible, and yet 
he has satisfied some of the most inquisitive 
practical men of England, that the income gives 
him eight per cent, on the outlay. I have not 
examined the statistics, as published in the 
Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society , and 
I know not how it is. 
-- 
INDIAN CORN. 
Indian corn is worthy of the title of King of 
the Cereals, at least in these United States: when 
every other grain-bearing plant is eaten up by 
insects, or fails from the caprice of the seasons, 
Indian corn is in its glory. My never-failing 
test of a good farmer is, to ask him the simple 
question, “ How is your corn crop ?” if he says it 
was “ destined by hot weather and drouth,”! set 
him down among the impracticable denouncers 
of God’s bounty, because this same hot weather 
is the salvation of a crop planted early on well- 
drained, manured, cultivated fields. Here is a 
farmer who waited until the 1st of June for his 
land to dry before he could plant it: his corn did 
not get far enough ahead to avail itself of the 
hot weather, hence the hot weather, not the farm¬ 
er, bears the blame of the failure of crop. Per 
contra, the man who plowed and planted early 
his well-drained field, worked among his tall 
corn during the hot weather, making artificial 
water in the soil, so that the drouth only helped 
to increase his crop, realized 150 bushels of 
ears to the acre this season. This has been a 
remarkable season in Seneca Co., as favorable to 
the good farmer as it has been disastrous to the 
shiftless one, who depended on the season alone 
to make up for his delinquency; but in the latter 
case the season, not the farmer, always has to 
bear the blame. 
When will farming be on a par with the 
other trades in improvement? Not as long, I 
fear, as farmers can contrive to live from the soil 
without compensating it for its misuse. One 
half the soi-disant farmers in Western New-York 
grow but little corn, wheat, or pork, for sale. 
The general excuse is, not the want of land, but 
the high price of labor and the lack of manure. 
The waste of animal manure, or rather the neg¬ 
lect to save and apply it economically, is one of 
the crying delinquencies of a Western farmer; 
he looks upon the soil as his indefeasible inher¬ 
itance, which hard usage even ought not to alien¬ 
ate ; and it would seem that nothing short of an 
entire failure of crop can disabuse him of his error. 
But we have among us an amateur farmer, who 
has sold two crops of tobacco from three acres 
for $2,200. He avers that the urine he has 
saved in cisterns from his fatting cattle and 
swine, is worth ten times as much, by actual 
weight, as the urea-exhausted manure from the 
farmer’s yard. This man is taunted by farmers 
with employing extraneous capital in his farm¬ 
ing : but I would ask, What excuse is this for a 
farmer to waste or misapply his capital and la¬ 
bor? 
It rarely enters into the philosophy of a farm¬ 
er of Western New-York that it is profitable 
I to soil cows during a drouth in summer. We 
have now thousands of milch cows nearly dried 
up: all the fall feed they can get must go, not 
to milk, but to make up lost flesh ; but our farm¬ 
ers say, and lay the unction to their souls, that 
the high price of butter will make up for the 
deficiency in quantity and loss of flesh in the 
cow. N’importe. 
Waterloo, Sept. 19th, 1853. 
ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF SALMON. 
A meeting of the salmon-fishing proprietors 
in the river Tay was lately held at Perth, for 
the purpose of considering the question of the 
artificial propagation of salmon. The chief 
aptakei' was Mr. Tik.mao Aan >roiiTn, from Ire¬ 
land, who stated that his brother and he have, 
at the present time, about 20,000 young salmon 
in ponds, produced by artificial means, which 
are daily fed with suitable food. His brother 
and himself having purchased the Galway Salmon 
Fishery in Ireland, they determined to try an 
experiment there for the artificial propagation 
of salmon. A suitable place having been fixed 
upon at Outerard, operations were commenced 
between the 20th December and the 1st of Jan¬ 
uary last, which was about a month too late, 
yet boxes were prepared in which the spawn of 
the salmon were deposited. These boxes were 
about eighteen inches square and six feet in 
length, with a zinc grating in the sluice at either 
end. There were twenty boxes in all, which 
were filled with gravel or small stones to the 
depth of six inches. To procure the ova and 
the milt of the female and male salmon, the fish 
were taken by small nets on the spawn fords at 
night, and instantly and without injury put into 
a tub one fourth full of water. The female fish 
was first turned on her back, one man holding 
the tail, anothef running his hands down each 
side from the head, and, pressing lightly with 
his thumbs, the ova was readily discharged into 
the tub; a similar course readily discharged the 
milt. About 370 salmon were treated in the 
same manner, and again returned to the river. 
Mr. Ashworth explained how the ova and milt 
were mixed in the tub, and then taken out of it 
with a cup and deposited in the boxes, when it 
was covered with additional gravel. There were 
at present about twenty thousand young salmon 
alive and thriving in these ponds, from two 
inches to three inches in length. The fine zinc 
gratings were used to prevent both trout and 
insects from getting into the ponds, as they were 
destructive to the salmon fry. The ponds were 
about twenty yards in length, and twelve to 
thirteen yards in breadth, and it was intended 
to keep the young salmon in them for ten months, 
when they will have grown to about four inches 
in length. They would then be able to take 
care of themselves on their way to the sea. He 
stated also that it was indispensable the young 
salmon should be fed daily with chopped flesh- 
meat. The current of water running through 
the boxes must be pure and free from mud, and 
great care was required to be taken during the 
periods of incubation, when the rivers were 
flooded by heavy rains, to divert the muddy 
water from the boxes. It took about one 
hundred days until the spawn gave indications 
of life. The expense of this plan of artificial 
propagation he did not estimate to exceed a 
pound a thousand, which was at the rate of a 
farthing each salmon. After some discussion, it 
was resolved that the experiment should be 
tried in the Tay; and a committee was appointed 
to adopt the requisite measures. 
-9®-# - 
“As Big as a Piece of Chalk.” —The “piece 
of chalk” which recently fell from Dover Cliffs, 
in England, was fifty feet long, forty feet wide, 
and sixty feet deep, and is estimated to weigh 
two thousand tons. 
Home-made Vinegar. —Mix with three gallons 
of soft (rain) water, one quart of molasses and 
one pint of yeast. It will ferment and turn to 
vinegar in four weeks. 
Woman: The last and best of the se¬ 
ries. If we may have her for a toast, we won’t 
ask for any S«£-her. 
