93 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[March, 
they will be alternately full and dry, no timber can 
be depended on for more than 8 or 10 years ; other¬ 
wise hemlock will remain serviceable for 20 years. 
Strips 3 inches wide may be taken and sawed into 
lengths of 3 feet. Of these, square tubes are made, 
and placed in the drain as shown in figure 1. The 
strips are cut into these short lengths so as to give 
a sufficient number of openings for the entrance of 
the water, and in nailing the strips together, at least 
one-sixteenth of an inch should be left between the 
ends of the strips for this purpose. Strips of this 
size will make a drain 2 inches in diameter. When 
larger drains are made, wider strips may be used, 
and to save lumber, they may be made in the shape 
shown at figure 2. Two strips are nailed together 
at their edges to form the channel of the drain, 
which should always be placed with the point 
downwards, for the purpose of causing a more rap¬ 
id flow of water, and thus preven'ui.g the accurnu- 
Fig. 2.— 'TRIANGULAR DRAIN. 
lation of silt or deposit. The covering is made of 
pieces of the strips cut to fit the width of the 
trough. If the strips were to be nailed lengthwise, 
there would be danger of their splitting and spoil¬ 
ing the drain after it had been laid ; when cut and 
nailed crosswise, this danger is avoided, the numer¬ 
ous spaces left between the joints also permits the 
water to enter the drains with greater freedom. 
This form may also be used for a small sized drain, 
and three four-inch strips will cost the same as the 
four three-inch strips used in the other form, (fig. 
1). One thousand feet of boards will make 1,000 
feet of drain of this size, and the cost of nails will 
be a trifle. The cost of a drain of this kind may, 
therefore, be easily ascertained. 
.-— OT i 
A Brush-Harrow. 
When manure has been spread in the fall or win¬ 
ter upon meadows, it should be broken up and 
evenly scattered in the spring. The most effective 
method to do this is by hand, but it is too laborious. 
The ordinary harrow gathers the manure into 
bunches, instead of spreading it, and some better 
implement is needed. The brush-harrow, shown in 
the illustration, does this work in the best manner. 
When drawn over the field, with the driver stand¬ 
ing upon it, it rolls the lumps of manure over, 
breaks them up, and leaves them well incorporated 
with the sod. It is made of an oak plank, 4 
inches thick, 14 to lfi inches wide, and 8 to 10 feet 
long. A tongue is bolted to the center, in such a 
manner that, when in use, the front of the plank is 
raised a few inches from the ground, so that the 
lumps of manure are not pushed along, but are 
brought beneath the plank, and broken up. A row 
of holes, II inches in diameter, are bored at the 
rear edge of the plank, about 2 inches apart. If 
the plank is weak, and there is danger of splitting 
it, the holes should be bored in two rows, every 
alternate hole being two inches further from the 
edge of the plank than the others. The butt ends 
of small brushy limbs of tough wood, such as oak 
or hickory, may then be placed in these holes, and 
split and wedged, so as to be held firmly. This makes 
a brush-harrow of the best kind, which will break 
up and pulverize the manure, and work it into the 
grass. This brush-harrow is also an excellent im¬ 
plement to finish the surface of a field newly sown 
with grass seed, or to brush over a wheat or rye 
field in the spring, after clover seed has been sown. 
Gardening on Shares. 
BY PETER HENDERSON. 
So many write to me for advice as to gardening 
on shares, for persons with capital to undertake 
gardening, and many other matters relating to the 
business aspects of market gardening, that I can 
no longer answer by letter, but ask you to allow 
me to make a general response through the Agri¬ 
culturist. Inquiries as to gardening on shares come 
from every section of the country, some of them 
from districts where to carry on the business in 
any form would be next to impracticable, and if 
done on shares, utterly absurd. In an experience 
of over a quarter of a century, I have never known 
of but a single instance in which gardening on 
shares was carried on for more than three years, 
and even in that instance it resulted in failure, and 
was throughout most unsatisfactory. It may now 
and then be judicious enough for the owner of land 
to work on shares with a man he knows all about , 
and who has proved himself capable and otherwise 
worthy of confidence, but to expect, as nine-tenths 
of my correspondents on this subject do, that a 
gardener can be found to order, who can be war¬ 
ranted as capable, honest, and amiable, and every 
other way qualified to fit such a position, is expect¬ 
ing a little too much from poor human nature. In 
all such cases, where a man is an owner of land that 
he wishes to convert into a market garden, let him 
engage a competent man, if he can get him, and 
pay him a salary for at least one year ; then, if both 
find that they can trust each other, and their ex¬ 
perience has shown what a fair and equitable ar¬ 
rangement would be, it will then be time enough 
to try wbat can be done on shares. Such men are 
scarce, I know, and high-priced when found, but 
men fitted to be partners with those whom they 
never before saw, are still scarcer, and would be 
likely to prove dearer than the salaried man would 
be. Then we have another class that inquire for 
moneyed partners. Only last week I had a letter 
from a gentleman, evidently educated and intel¬ 
ligent, writing from some unheard of hamlet in 
Louisiana, who modestly asked me to endeavor to 
find him a partner having a capital of 85,000, to en¬ 
gage in the business of fruit and vegetable raising. 
Whether he was of the class alluded to in your 
humbug article in December, I know not, but if 
not of that class, he was certainly quite unused to 
the ways of the world. Were this a solitary case, 
I would not have alluded to it, but I have had 
many such applications, though none of them are so 
utterly absurd as this. The writer of your humbug 
article tritely says : “ Leaving money out of the 
question, how can a sensible person associate him¬ 
self iu business with an entire stranger! ”—This 
sums up the whole matter, and should be a suffici¬ 
ent answer to all who are foolish enough to think 
working partners (to them utterly unknown) are 
ever likely to be found—having the combination 
of qualities necessary to successfully run a farm or 
garden on shares. There is another class of in¬ 
quirers—many of them in far distant States—who 
have farms or gardens they wish to rent or to sell. 
If these people would think a minute, they would 
see how unlikely it is that any one can be found to 
bite at such a bait, no matter how fine it may be 
shown to be, in a country like ours, where land for 
such purposes is almost everywhere a drug. If 
land is to be rented or sold for market gardening, 
it must be to some one who is nearer to it than 
a thousand miles. 
[This note of our contributor shows that we are 
not the only ones who are asked to do impossible 
things. Not a week passes but we are offered a 
commission to sell property in some far-off locality, 
to find a gardener on shares, to look up a capitalist 
to help develop a farm that has “ minerals ” on it, 
or some such thing. The very day this article 
came, we had a letter from a gentleman in a South¬ 
ern State, offering us 8200 if we would find him a 
practical man with capital , to go into fruit growing. 
We would say to all such, that when the publishers 
or editors of the Agriculturist wish to sell or rent 
property, or wish to engage a man for any purpose, 
they advertise in the journal most likely to reach 
the persons they seek. They have done this dur¬ 
ing the past year, and are not likely to make per¬ 
sonal exertions to dispose of the property of other 
people, when they have no time to do it for their 
own. As to market gardening, land is a secondary 
consideration, and a market is the first. A man 
had better pay §1,000 an acre for land near New 
York or other large city, than to take it at a dis¬ 
tance for nothing.— Ed.] 
Willows—Osier. 
Every few years some extravagant statements in 
regard to the profits of the cultivation of osiers, 
causes a mild excitement, and we are in the receipt 
of letters of inquiry, some of which ask us about 
one point, and some about other points in relation 
to their culture. This article is intended as a re¬ 
ply to several letters, and covers about all the 
ground. In Europe, where osiers are an important 
crop, very nice distinctions are made in the quality 
of the rods, and those intended for the finer kinds 
of basket work, are yielded by different species, of 
varieties, from those intended for coarser work; 
the rods of some kinds are valued for their strength, 
while the others are for their suppleness and tho 
readiness with which they may be woven into intri¬ 
cate designs. In some of the English catalogues 
there are over 30 kinds enumerated, most of which 
are not to be procured, and not even known in 
this country. Those who wish to undertake the 
growth of osiers, must either import their plants to 
start with, or be content with the few kinds that 
can be had at our nurseries. It is commonly sup¬ 
posed that to be useful as osiers, the willows must 
be naturally of a dwarf growing kind ; this is a 
mistake; the production of osiers is a matter of 
cultivation, and if the twigs are of a useful quality, 
the largest species may be used as well as the 
smaller ones. The number of willows offered by 
our nurserymen is very small, and mostly of orna¬ 
mental varieties, such as the Kilmarnock, Weeping, 
etc. They generally offer “osier willows,” with¬ 
out designating the species, and we assume that it 
is the common White Osier, Salix viminalis, a kind 
remarkable for its rapid growth, and the great 
length of its shoots, but its rods are not so tough 
as those of some other species. The White Willow, 
S. alba, about which there was so much excitement 
as a hedge plant, a few years ago, may be made to 
yield useful osiers, but not so good as that of its 
variety, Vitellina, the well known Golden Willow, 
very common as a large tree, and conspicuous by 
the bright yellow color of its recent growth. This 
is much cultivated in England, as an osier. One of 
our native species, the Shining Willow, S. lucida , 
also called the Laurel-leaved and Bay-leaved willow, 
is the handsomest of all willows, (See Agriculturist, 
April, 1873, for engraving), and will give good rods 
for coarse work. These, so far as a thorough in¬ 
spection of the leading nursery catalogues goes, 
are an the kinds readily attainable, though there 
are others in private hands. It is possible that a 
trial of other vigorous native species, may show 
that some of them are worth cultivating, and 
in the older parts of the country, some of the 
European osier species have become naturalized, 
that are not to be found in the nurseries. Because 
some willows grow naturally in wet places, it is a 
mistake to suppose that low damp ground is essen¬ 
tial to osiers; the fact is that the best osiers are 
only grown upon good soil, which should be drained 
and prepared as for ordinary farm crops. Willows 
are always propagated from cuttings, which are of 
branches of one, or at most two years’ growth ; 
these are cut into pieces a foot long, with one clean 
slanting cut, and sharpened at the lower end, to 
