AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
389 
be their souls, they still have human feelings, 
and I ara not so constituted that I can witness 
the injustice of their treatment and their suffer¬ 
ing without compassion — without indignation. 
It ought to be made known wherever English 
law prevails, that these poor creatures are de¬ 
ceived and sold into a servitude from which 
they almost daily seek escape through death — 
by Englishmen. It is not domestic slavery in 
which they are placed; they were not born 
slaves; they are not protected by any laws; 
there are no women with them; their condition 
is worse than that of any criminals, exiles, or 
prisoners in any civilized nation. It ought to 
be every where known. Americans, who have 
to bear the reproaches of the English for insti¬ 
tutions entailed upon them, and which they 
could not avoid, have a right to reply that the 
worst slavery that exists among the civilized na¬ 
tions of the earth is maintained by the British 
subjects , who transport coolies to the Chincha 
Islands. It is not the fault of the English that 
the same system is not carried on in Australia. 
The coolies brought here, however, have not 
turned out a good speculation. But the taking 
and selling free men to such taskmasters as 
these Peruvians, who are little better than the 
Chinese, is an outrage to humanity, and a re¬ 
proach to British rule. Let the next slaver the 
English cruisers capture be some one of their 
own ships, with a cargo of coolies for this mar¬ 
ket.— New- YorTc Times. 
- t-e-a - 
CLOVER SEED-EXPERIMENTS. 
Mr. Editor : — Experiments have convinced 
me that in sowing clover seed, there is great 
danger of covering it too deep. When the seed 
is sowed and covered in with a heavy, long¬ 
toothed harrow, as it invariably is, in some 
sections, it is not only possible, but very proba¬ 
ble that no small portion of the quantity applied, 
fails to come up in consequence of the great 
depth at which it is placed beneath the surface. 
Without detailing my own experience, permit 
me to present the following extract from a late 
paper, promising however, that the results 
given, though arrived at by a more exact and 
methodical process, agree, precisely, in the 
main, with my own : 
“ Experiments performed in England, have 
shown that clover seed does best when but 
slightly covered, or very near the surface of the 
earth. Thirteen compartments or beds were 
sown, the seed in each successive bed being 
buried a quarter of an inch deeper than that in 
the preceding one; and varying from mere 
sprinkling on the surface, to three inches deep. 
The following numbers indicate the number of 
plants which came up in each bed, from an 
equal number of seed, each successive one being 
a quarter of an inch deeper — 17, 16, 14, 11, 
11, S, 4, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0. From no depth, to 
about one inch, the seed mostly came up. 
Hence the impolicy of covering clover seed 
with a heavy harrow; washing in by rain, or 
fresh earth, or working in by the crumbling 
influence of frost, being better.” 
Where lands are very nearly flat, or so level 
as not to be washed at all by the water from 
the melting snow, or severe spring rains, I have 
found that seed—clover, herds’ grass, and other 
kinds—is well enough buried by the action of 
the frost as recommended above. The fissures 
caused by this principle, if the seed be scattered 
on the surface of a late snow, will receive and 
cover it so that its germination will be very 
certain; but on lands liable to wash, this 
method is not practicable. It should also be 
remarked that the climate of England is much 
more moist than ours, and, that, consequently, 
seed sown near the surface would not be so 
likely to fail from lack of moisture, during the 
germinating period, as with us, where a few 
days of drying sun and wind leaves the surface 
almost wholly destitute of water. That seed is 
lost from being sunk too far below the surface, 
as much of it must be when covered with the 
harrow, I have not the slightest doubt. — A 
New-Englander, in Germantown Telegraph. 
The Knickerbocker for February is as racy 
as ever. It is published by Mr. Samuel Hues- 
ton, 139 Nassau street, at $3 a year, or can be 
had with the Agriculturist for $4 a year — sav¬ 
ing those thus subscribing one dollar. It is edited 
as usual by that prince of good fellows, Willis 
Gaylord Clark. We present our readers with 
a few crumbs from the abundant “Table” he 
sets twelve times a year for his readers, garn¬ 
ished with the best of hash and the most spicy 
desserts, of which it is our good fortune to par¬ 
take — “ the gusto whereof is great—the diges¬ 
tion marvellous.” The Knickerbocker thus de¬ 
scribes a 
Sleigh Riding in Detroit. — At the first fall of 
snow, of sufficient depth for sleighing, which in 
Michigan usually happens about Christmas, 
every body who owns a horse and sleigh, or 
who is rich enough to hire one, enjoys himself 
in the best possible manner by taking a sleigh- 
ride. At such times the principal streets of the 
villages and cities present a fine appearance; 
Jefferson Avenue, in Detroit, particularly so. 
It is one of the finest streets in the United 
States. It is one hundred and twenty feet 
broad, three miles'long, and paved throughout 
its whole extent, and for the greater part of the 
way runs on the ridge of a hill. Imagine to 
yourself such a street, filled throughout its 
whole length and breadth with sleighs of every 
description ; the sturdy old farmer, with his long 
box-sleigh and team of fat horses, one usually a 
bay and the other a gray, who has brought his 
family and a load of turkeys to town; the old 
Frenchman, with his home-made hickory-cutter, 
looking not unlike a low crockery-crate upon 
runners, who owns a farm which his forefathers 
have owned before him for many generations, 
whose ostensible business is farming, but whose 
principal crop is hay, which requires no trouble 
but the mowing, and who lives upon the sale of 
his hay, the straw-hats his wife makes, and the 
products of his gun and fish-net; with his 
shaggy little pony, whose short legs move so 
fast that you would be apt to think he was mak¬ 
ing quick time, were there no larger horses near 
him; the provident and economical Dutchman, 
who has saved money enough to buy a small 
tract of wood-land, with his wood-rack and try 
hcekory woot, (dry hickory wood,) which was 
cut two months before from a beech-grove; the 
horse-jockey, with his trotter harnessed to his 
old cutter, which looks as if it would part com¬ 
pany with its runners before long; the close 
Englishman, who carries his hay to market 
while his competitors, the Frenchmen, are en¬ 
joying themselves, thus getting a quicker sale 
and a better price; a marshal, whose duty it is 
to prevent persons from driving faster than six 
miles an hour, with his pacer passing you so 
quick that you do but catch a glimpse of a huge 
pair of whiskers and a tremendous cane, when 
he is gone ; a constable, who looks as if he was 
trying to arrest the marshal; a sheriff, who 
strives to be near enough the constable to see that 
he does his duty; a justice of the peace after the 
sheriff, and a sober judge pursuing them all; fol¬ 
lowed by an editor, two or three aldermen, and 
perhaps the mayor; the young buck, anxious to 
follow such distinguished leaders, running into 
a horse-post, thereby releasing the horse from 
all connection with himself and cutter; the sober 
old citizen in one sleigh, with most of his child¬ 
ren and his wife in another, with a steady and 
exceedingly gentle old horse, driven by his old¬ 
est son; the old horse not being sharp-shod, 
slips down and breaks the thills; whereupon 
the lady jumps out and catches hold of the back 
of the cutter, to prevent Doll from running 
away, should she feel so inclined when she gets 
up; the public sleighs, filled with families of 
not over-rich mechanics, and the sleek livery- 
stable horses attached to fancy-cutters, and dri¬ 
ven by men. Imagine all this, and much more, 
and you will have an imperfect idea of Jefferson 
Avenue in sleighing-time at night. 
An Illinois Orator. — They have orators out 
in Illinois, if we may trust the description of a 
certain military one, furnished us by a corre¬ 
spondent in that State: It was dog-days, and a 
great hue-and-cry had been raised about mad 
dogs; although no person could be found who 
had seen one, the excitement still grew by the 
rumors it was fed on. A meeting of the citizens 
was called for the purpose of devising plans for 
the extermination, not only of mad dogs, but, to 
make safety doubly safe, of dogs in general. 
The Brigadier was appointed chairman. After 
stating the object of the meeting, in a not very 
parliamentary manner, instead of taking his 
seat, and allowing others to make some sugges¬ 
tions, he launched forth into a speech of some 
half hour’s length, of which the following burst 
of forensic splendor is a sample : “Fellur citi¬ 
zens : the time has come when the o’ercharged 
feelin’s of aggrawated human natur are no lon- 
to be stood. Mad dogs arc midst us. Their 
shriekin’ yelp and foray track can be heerd and 
seen on our pcrarics. Death follcrs in thfcir 
wake; shall we set here, like cowards, while 
our lives and our neighbors’ lives are in danger 
from their dredful borashus hidrofobic caninety ? 
No; it mustn’t be! E’en now my buzum is 
torn with the conflictin’ feelin’s of rath and wen- 
gcance: a funeral-pyre of wild-cats is burnin’ in 
me! I have horses and cattle; I have sheep 
and pigs; and I have a wife and children ; and 
(rising higher as the importance of the subject 
deepened in his estimation,) I have money out 
at interest, all in danger of bein' bit by these 
dredf ul omniferous mad dogs !" 
Yellow Fever.— During the year 1819, while 
the yellow-fever was raging with such violence 
in this city, a gentleman traveling from New- 
York, stopped at a country town, where the in¬ 
habitants were mostly Dutch. During his stay, 
he was asked if the report was true, that two or 
three hundred died every day in the city ? He 
gave a negative answer, and said there had been 
only fifty or sixty cases in all. “ Well,” said the 
Dutchman, “how many generally come in a 
case ?" 
A gentleman in Ohio, given to speculation in 
the structures of legs and feathers commonly 
known as Shanghai chickens, was much annoyed 
by the rats. Determined to endure it no longer, 
he constructed a large box-trap, which he baited 
with a liberal supply of grease, corn, and other 
articles for which rats are supposed to have a 
penchant. The next morning, the boys ran in to 
him in a state of excitement, announcing the 
fact of a tremendous bobbery being kicked up 
in the trap, which, of course, proceeded from a 
captured rat. In a few moments, the box was 
carefully lifted, and suddenly plunged into the 
water-butt, where it was kept submerged until 
long after the commotion had subsided. Then, 
the trap was triumphantly lifted, disclosing to 
the astonished bird fancier the swollen body 
of— h is favorite fifteen-dollar Shanghai rooster ! 
During the war of 1812, an old gentleman 
who was always on the alert to obtain the latest 
news from the army, made his usual inquiry of 
a wag. “The latest news from the army,” re¬ 
plied the wag, “is, that they are in statu quo." 
“Ah?—how far's that from Montreal ?" asked 
the old gentleman. 
We give a few from the many items in the 
Editor’s favorite “ Children’s Side-Table.” 
In the time of Tip. and Ty., politics ran, like 
the measles, or any other infectious disease, 
through whole families, and all took sides, from 
prattling two-year-olds, to octogenarian grand¬ 
mothers. Charley, like his father, was a strong 
Whig; and, although very fond of his grand¬ 
father, with whom they lived, resisted all in¬ 
ducements to agree with him in politics. He 
