122 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[April, 
Contents for April, 1875. 
Animals, Feeding, Profitably.129 
Barn, a Dairy.4 Illustrations. .140 
Beans, Field. 141 
Boe-hive, Voices from the.132 
Belt, How to Lace a.3 Illustrations.. 138 
Boys and Girls Columns—April—Have Butterflies 
Feathers ?—Answers to Puzzle Pictures—Pyxidan- 
tliera and Dogs—Aunt Sue’s Chats—The Alarm— 
Aunt Sire's Puzzle-Box—Something about Air— 
Tired Little Robbie—The Geese and the Spitz_ 
4 Illustrations ..147—150 
Catalogues Received.133 
Cattle, Pair of Young Jersey. Illustrated.. 135 
Cattle, Prize Short-horn.. Illustrated.. 135 
Chicken Coops from Barrels.2 Illustrations.. 139 
Congressional Imposition .130 
Eulalia and Robert Buist.133 
Feed Cooker, Cheap and Handy.2 Illustrations. .139 
Field-Markers.2 Illustrations. .134 
Flower-Garden for April. ... 124 
Fruit Garden for April.123 
Gardening Success Under Difficulties.134 
Gate Sliding. Illustrated. .140 
Greenhouse and Window Plants for April.125 
Hand-Glasses.3 Illustrations.. 143 
Hay for Market, Baling.5 Illustrations. .137 
Homesteader. Illustrated. .128 
Household Department—Will the Coming Woman 
Fry ?—Place for the Slop-jar—Parlor Matches—Car¬ 
pet Stretcher—Steam in the Kitchen—What shall we 
Have for Breakfast ?—White Rolls..4 111 .145-147 
House Plan..G Illustrations. .128 
Kitchen Garden for April.124 
Lawn and Grounds for April.124 
Manure from the Sea.141 
Market-Gardens, Extra Plowing.128 
Market-Gardens, Failures in.144 
Market Report for April.125 
Ogden Farm Papers, No. 62—Jersey Cattle—Wants 
to be a Farmer—Deep-Can System—Farm-House 
Drainage—Liquid Manure Vat—Value of Crops for 
Manure.?..130-132 
Orchard and Nursery for April.123 
Palms as Decorative Plants. Illustrated.. 143 
Passion-Flowers.145 
Patent Medicines. 159 
Peat Swamps and Wet Prairie, Reclaiming.139 
Plow, Value of Gang.135 
Poultry House and Nest.3 Illustrations.. 133 
Practice and Science Agree.141 
Propagating Case or Forcing Pit.145 
Quail, Arizona. ... Illustrated. .1 41 
Science Applied to Farming.130 
Snake’s Eggs.141 
Sail Boats and their Rig. Illustrated. .138 
Stone-Boats.3 Illustrations. 128 
Straw Mats or Screens..7 Illustrations. .144 
Tomatoes, Training. Illustrated. .145 
Turkeys, Management of Young...140 
Walks and Talks on the Farm, No. 136—Cold Win¬ 
ter—Good Farming— Apples — Orchards—Wool— 
Merino Ewes.136-137 
Work, Hints About.122 
INDEX TO “BASKET,” OR SHORTER ARTICLES. 
Advertisements, Unfortu¬ 
nate. .126 
Agricultural Dealers,Wide 
Awake.158 
Am. PomologicaVSociety.126 
Apples, Trouble with... .159 
Are yon Going to Paint?.158 
Ashes .127 
Blackberry,. Snyder.127 
Book on Farmin''.127 
Butterand Egg Ass., Nat.157 
Butter Package, Metallic 
Illustrated .127 
Cabbages. Gas Lime for. 158" 
Calves, Treatment, of_158 
Catalogues, Illustrated.. .127 
Cheese Competition... .157 
Codling Motli and Paris 
Green.159 
Cold Springs after Warm 
Winters.127 
Corn Crusher. 158 
Corn, Plowing for.15S 
Daily Record.126 
Ecrasenr. _’. 127.' 
Egyptian Corn and Japan 
Pea..158 
Horse, How to Feed.158 
Horse,to Prevent Rolling.!®? 
Horticulture in Wisco’n.159 
Hyacinths and Cameilias.159 
Labels, Zinc.159 
Making Manure...159 
Manure, Covering.158 
Manure, Spreading.158 
Mole-trap, Cheap.157 
No Name.157 
Peach on Poplar.127 
Pigs and Pork.158 
Pigs, Over-Feeding.158 
Pomological Soc., S. Ha¬ 
ven.158 
Pnmpkin-seed for Cows. .158 
Rock Drill Machine.... .127 
Sawing Wood by Hand- 
Power.158 
Sheep...158 
Sheep Laurel. 158 
Sundry Humbugs_ .. 126 
Supherphosphate Mapes’157 
Thrush, Treatment of...159 
Walks and Talks Corre¬ 
spondence.159 
Whitewashes. Out-door. .157 
Fowls, Black Spanish.. ,.158’Wooden and Brick Build- 
Grape Vine. Patent_158 ings.126 
Hedges in Kentucky.... ,127' 
Still another Use for 01«1 Cans.— 
Mr. Jonathan Huggins, Sec’y. Bunker Hill, (Ill.) Farm¬ 
er’s Club, and a well known horticulturist and lover of 
birds, writes that lie makes use of discarded fruit, and 
oyster cnr» for bird houses. We thank him for this hint, 
and it is not too late for our readers to act upon it. 
Calendar for April. 
Boston. JS'Eng- 
N. : 
T .Citn, Cl.. 
Washington , 
land. J \. 
York 
Philadelphia , 
Maryland. 
State. Michi- 
New Jersey, 
Virginia.Ken- 
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Wiscon- 
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Ohio. 
tuck u. Jlissou- 
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sin. 
Iowa, and 
Indiana 
and 
ri. and 
Cali- 
Oregon. 
Illinois. 
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PHASES OF THE MOON. 
MOON. 
BOSTON. 
N. YORK. 
wash’n. 
CIIA'STON 
CHICAGO. 
New M’n 
1st Quart 
Full M’n 
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1 52 mo. 
4 59 ev. 
11 4fi mo. 
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11 34 mo. 
2 21 ev. 
n. m. » 
1 2S mo 
4 25 ev. 
11 22 mo 
2 9 ev. 
n. m. 
1 Ifi mo. 
4 13 ev. 
11 10 mo. 
1 57 ev. 
H. M. 
0 46 mo. 
3 43 ev. 
10 40 mo. 
1 27 ev. 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
NEW YORK, APRIL, 1875. 
It is now the beginning of a new year to the 
farmer. How the year will end, depends less upon 
accident than upon foresight and good manage¬ 
ment. In all the older states the soil has yielded 
up its first fruits, and now nothing comes out of it 
that is not first put into it. True, the soil every¬ 
where is a vast storehouse filled with riches, but it 
is safely locked, and only those who possess and 
use the key can touch the wealth secured therein. 
By no trickery or fraud can one gain admission to 
it. It is only by honest, skillful labor that it can be 
reached. Hence it is that the farmer’s profession 
is in its nature an honest and dignified one. He 
cannot adulterate, he cannot cheat the soil; there 
are no byways to wealth for him but hard labor and 
skillful work, and he can live only by what he earns. 
But blindly directed or unskillful work will bring 
to the farmer only the poorest return, as in fact it 
does and must do to every worker in any other of 
the world’s industries. Skill in farming does not 
wholly consist in raising large crops, but in raising 
those that produce the most money. Just now it 
may be noticed that 56 lbs. of the best No. 1 spring 
wheat sell at the seaboard for SI. 10, while 48 lbs. 
of barley brings $1.40 ; at the same time the world’s 
markets are crowded with wheat, and granaries are 
ready to pour out an overflowing 6tream. Had not 
corn been a failure in many extensive localities, it 
would have again been offered for 20 cents a 
bushel, or burning in thousands of stoves. Also we 
find that a well fed cow will yield over $50 worth 
of cheese in a season of six months, while thousands 
of acres of the best native grass lands in the west 
are plowed up yearly to make fields for the ever¬ 
lasting corn ; $50 worth of cheese can he sent to an 
eastern market for $2 in freight, hut $50 worth of 
corn or wheat will cost $30 in freight, leaving in 
one case $48, and in the other, hut $20 for the farm¬ 
er’s profit. The cost of producing these articles 
also differs in about the same ratio. Again the 
wheat is shipped away to English markets, and 
wool and woolen goods brought hack in exchange, 
and the western farmer with his narrow profits 
buys these goods, while his magnificent prairies 
have not one sheep to crop their most nutritious 
and healthful grasses, where there might be a 
thousand. Then the western farmer raises flax and 
sells the seed to the mills, where it is made into oil 
and oilcake; but that oilcake goes to England to 
feed cattle and to enrich those fields which com¬ 
pete with our own, while beef in eastern cities is 
25 cents a pound. At the same time the flax fiber 
is made into manure, and the farmer buys Irish and 
Scotch linens with the money he gets from these 
linen weavers for his wheat, which is carried 5,000 
miles to feed them. It may he that this cannot he 
helped, but it looks as though farmers ought to 
grow less wheat and corn, and more grass, and 
make more cheese, beef, mutton, and wool. At 
any rate, there is food for reflection in all these facts. 
Hints about Work. 
Sow to Work .—As order is kept by having a place 
for everything, and keeping everything in its place, 
so work succeeds best when it is rightly done, and 
at the right time. There are a best and a worst way 
of doing everything, and a best and a worst time 
for doing it. One who has well considered his sea¬ 
son’s work and has a list of all that has to be done 
will go right; one labor will succeed another with 
regularity, and each will be well done. Every job 
should tell. There should be no making holes and 
filling them up again on a farm, no hand-work 
where machines can be used ; no small weeds left 
to grow large ; no manure kept wasting by the rain 
or baked in the sun while crops are starving for 
it; no work done twice over; no cattle starved or 
allowed to suffer and fail, to be restored at a greater 
cost than they are worth; everything should he 
ahead, and work must be driven and not he allowed 
to drive. The head must guide the hands always. 
Sired men .—Get the best hands, and keep them. 
When a man has become used to his work and his 
employer, he is worth more than a stranger. There 
is a way of making men interested in their work, of 
satisfying their self-respect, treating them courte¬ 
ously and reasonably, giving them credit for suc¬ 
cess, while holding them strictly responsible for 
failures, and above all, by paying them promptly 
and liberally, that will make their work worth dou¬ 
ble what it would otherwise be. As land advances 
in price, more labor must he expended on it to 
make it pay a profit, and by and by we must have 
a settled laboring class. We are now in process of 
educating this class of men, and must do it by good 
management. Give each hired man a copy of the 
Agriculturist to read and study ; the money it will 
cost in a year will he saved every month. 
Plowing, Sarrowing, and Soiling .—Begin as soon 
as the ground is dry and mellow, and sow as soon 
as it is prepared. Where the soil is mellow it is riot 
necessary to harrow before sowing, unless the drill 
is used. The use of the roller after sowing is in¬ 
valuable at this season. It compacts the soil about 
the seed and levels the surface for the harvesters. 
If you have no roller, give a carpenter a copy of the 
March Agriculturist, and let him make one from the 
directions and illustrations there given ; or, buy an 
iron one at once from an implement dealer. The 
roller is an almost indispensable field implement. 
Barley .—A warm, dry, rich loam is the best barley 
soil, hut a clay soil if well mellowed and dry, will 
bring a good crop. Sow two bushels per acre, with 
the drill, as fast as the land is plowed and harrowed, 
but if broadcast, use half a bushel more of seed, 
and harrow. Roll after sowing in either ease, or 
when the barley is two inches high. Either the 
2-rowed or 6-rowed may he sown ; the first is the 
heavier, and the latter higher priced in the market. 
Clover and Grass-Seed .—There is no better crop 
to seed with than barley. Six quarts of clover and 
four of timothy is the quantity per acre. Sow be¬ 
fore the land is rolled. We have frequently sown 
a peck of clover-seed per acre with oats with suc¬ 
cess in every case, but never used more than 21 
bushels of oats for seed. With this thin seeding 
the clover is not smothered, and in good ground 
the oats will he heavy enough. Grass and clover 
may be sown alone upon fine mellow soil, and if 
the ground is rich, may yield a cutting of hay in 
June or July. Orchard grass succeeds well in this 
way. Cahoon’s broadcast sower will sow four 
acres with grass, clover, etc., in an hour. 
Oats.—Soils that are moist, or newly-plowed sod,, 
should be sown to oats in preference to barley. Sow 
