216 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[June, 
corn-fodder produced about the same effect. Would 
prefer corn-fodder as a steady feed to hay. Yellow 
corn-meal will color butter much better than white 
meal. Early-sown rye makes excellent winter pas¬ 
turage, and is very profitable, but the best fall and 
early winter feed is sorghum planted thickly in 
drills.” (This last sentence applies to hot climates.) 
I have recently had a visit from Mr. Edward Bur¬ 
nett, of Soulhborougli, Mass., to whose operations 
I have before referred in these papers. lie has 
adopted in his operations the only system that now 
seems to me consistent with profitable farming in 
the older settled parts of the country, that is, the 
principle that the way to make up for poor soil and 
an expensive system of cultivation, both of which 
help to cut us down in our competition with the 
west, is to produce special articles of first-rate qual¬ 
ity, and to bring them to the favorable notice of 
those who are willing to pay extraordinary prices 
for what suits their fancy. Mr. Burnett is a large 
producer of butter, for which he gets a round price, 
mainly from private customers, but he has gradu¬ 
ally worked into a large trade in pork. He feeds, 
on his own farm and others, a good class of well- 
bred shotes, giving them no refuse of any kind ex¬ 
cept skimmed milk, and making up the rest of their 
diet with corn and oats, and a certain amount of 
clover and corn-fodder. These pigs he kills at the 
rate of about one hundred per month from Novem¬ 
ber until March, dressing an average weight of 
about one hundred and fifty pounds. Everything 
about his establishment is as cleanly and well ar¬ 
ranged as in a large public abattoir, and he gives 
his personal attention to every part of the business. 
This perfect cleanliness of feeding and handling 
being well known, he has not yet been able to keep 
pace with the demand for his hams, bacon, jowls, 
sausages and lard. The lowest price for which any 
part of the animal is sold, is twenty cents per 
pound, net cash, at which price he has already con¬ 
tracted to deliver six thousand pounds of lard next 
winter. His theory is, to sell nothing whatever 
with the name of his farm attached to it except for 
a price considerably above that of the ordinary 
market, and so far as possible, to keep nothing that 
will not readily command this higher price, and he 
is able to live up to his theory more closely than 
most of us are. 
It is a little curious to see how all of the better 
farmers at the east are adopting very simple rota¬ 
tions. They often begin with quite an elaborate 
scries of crops such as the books recommend for 
the improvement of the soil, but they generally 
come around after a little experience to something 
like that which Mr. Burnett has “ worked into ” : 
first year, corn on an inverted sod, with a good 
dressing of stable manure ; second year, mangel- 
wurzel, very heavily manured; third year, barley, 
seeded down in the spring with grass; and then 
grass for years afterward, so long as top-dressing 
will keep the crop good, or until the land is again 
needed for corn. I asked Mr. B. whether it paid him 
to raise corn. He said that it did not, but that he 
considered it absolutely necessary to have the fod¬ 
der to feed his cows in winter—an end that he 
could gain more satisfactorily by sowing his corn 
thickly in drills for fodder and not troubling him¬ 
self about the grain at all. 
I am often at a loss to know how to treat reports 
concerning the large yield of very small herds of 
cows which have been selected with great care, and 
which are treated as well as cows can be. I am 
sometimes disposed to doubt their truth, but thus 
far investigation has always shown them to be well 
founded. A cattle-dealer in Connecticut reported 
a Jersey cow that yielded 574 lbs. of butter in a 
year.' Thoroughly as I am in favor of the breed, 
I refused to believe this statement until the owner 
and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. J. II. Sutliff, of Bristol, 
Conn., who are known to be trustworthy people, 
made affidavit, that during the whole year they had 
employed no servants in the stable or dairy, but 
taken direct personal care of everything for them¬ 
selves, and had kept a careful record. The cow 
cajpe jn Sept. SI, 1871, “ The trial commenced Oct. 
1, 1871, with the following results: October, 60 lbs. 
8 oz.; November, 52 lbs.; December, 55 lbs. 5 oz.; 
January, 57 lbs. 4 oz. ; February, 54 lbs. 2 oz.; 
March, 54 lbs. 6 oz.; April, 47 lbs. ; May, 49 lbs. 7 
oz. ; June, 45 lbs. 9 oz. ; July, 37 lbs. 12 oz. ; Au¬ 
gust, 31 lbs.; and September, 30 lbs. Total, 574 
lbs. 5 oz. During November considerable milk was 
sold, so that less butter was made.” This is the 
champion Jersey to this date, the largest authentic 
report before this having been that of Mr. Motley’s 
cow, Flora, producing 511 lbs. 
Another Connecticut man sets us all a very good 
example—Mr. F. M. North, w ho lives at East Ber¬ 
lin. He has seven acres of rnowung and pasturage, 
and keeps three grade Jerseys, bred by himself. 
These cows calved Feb. 26th, Feb. 27th, and March 
7th, 1874, and an exact account of their product 
was kept from March 1st to December 15th, during 
which time 700 quarts of milk were consumed in 
the family, (estimated), and 790 quarts were sold, 
yet in the time mentioned, 1,105 lbs. of butter were 
made, being an average of 3681 lbs. per cow. In 
September it took a trifle over 7 quarts of milk to 
make a pound of butter. In November, when the 
cattle were fed eight quarts per day, of bran and 
meal, it took but 5$ quarts. I know nothing of the 
circumstances of this case, save that the account is 
given in great detail, with name and date, and is 
contributed by W. H. Yeomans, of Columbia, Conn., 
to the Live Stock Journal. From what I know of 
the capabilities of the breed when carefully kept on 
small places, I do not question the truth of the 
statement. 
Mr. S. G. Livermore, of Robin, Iowa, -qind J. W. 
Riley, of Troy, Ohio, both send reports of great 
success with their Jersey cattle, but they and all 
others who favor me with such letters will under¬ 
stand that, while I read them all w'ith great satis¬ 
faction, it would not be fair to the general readers 
of the Agriculturist to give too much space to such 
details concerning a single breed. 
Mr. William Spicer, of West Hallock, Ill., re¬ 
ports experiments with the deep-can system, and I 
regard the adoption of this system so important to 
the general dairy interests of the country, that I 
make no apology for my frequent reference to it. 
Mr. S. has made three comparative trials with cans 
holding 381 lbs. of milk, and with ordinary milk- 
pans. On the first trial, the milk being cooled be¬ 
fore setting, the temperature of the room 50° to 
55°, and the cream beingtaken off forty-eight hours 
after setting, there was made 1 lb of butter from 
21 3 / 10 lbs. of milk in cans, and 1 lb. of butter from 
2L e / 10 lbs. of milk in pans. In the next experiment 
the conditions were the same, except that the tem¬ 
perature was from 45° to 50° ; the cans made 1 lb 
of butter from 19 e / 10 lbs. of milk, and the pans made 
1 lb of butter from 22' J /io lbs. of milk. In the next 
trial the temperature was from 55° to 60°. The cans 
made 1 lb of butter from 22‘/ 10 lbs. of milk, and the 
pans, 1 lb. of butter from 21 3 /io lbs. of milk. He 
says, “We made several more trials with about the 
same results, and notwithstanding the decision of 
the Solebury Farmers’ Club, or the predictions of 
old dairymen, we are setting milk in deep cans, 
each of which yields about 3i inches of solid cream 
and a superior quality of butter.” 
This experiment, like many others that I have 
published, supports my original view that there is 
neither a gain nor a loss of quantity resulting from 
the deep-setting. In any proper setting, deep or 
shallow, all the cream is undoubtedly raised, but 
the advantage in uniformity of product, improve¬ 
ment of quality, and saving of labor, secured by 
the deep-can system, constitute advantages which 
it seems to mo that no unprejudiced man can dis¬ 
regard. 
- m n -■ - 
Assistance in Hatchinc? Eggs.— Assistance is 
sometimes of great importance in hatching, especi¬ 
ally in the case of the thick shells of the eggs of 
Asiatic fowls and of ducks. It is a good plan to 
sprinkle or dip the eggs in tepid water every day at 
noon for a week before hatching. The shell cracks 
more easily. When the shell is chipped, if the bird 
does not come out in a few hours, it should have just 
a little help, and but a little. Break the shell a little 
each side of the chip, and tear the membrane where 
it is dried. Great care must be taken not to draw 
blood. Make only juet room enough for the 
bill and head to get free. Having done this, put 
the egg back again under the fluff of the hen, and 
watch the progress made in hatching two or three 
times a day. We save the lives of a good many 
chickens and ducks every season by a little timely 
aid while hatching. If kept quiet and carefully 
handled, no harm will result to mother or brood. 
Care op Root Crops. —Roots can not be grown 
successfully without perfectly clean and frequent 
cultivation. The ground may be rich but yet pro¬ 
duce a poor crop of roots if weeds are permitted, 
or if the soil is allowed to become dry and hard. 
An extra outlay of 85 or less per acre for labor in 
weeding and cultivation, may very easily make a 
difference of $25 or $50 in the crop. The 6ame is 
true of com, but especially of roots, which insist on 
having a mellow, clean soil, or they refuse to grow. 
Spelling Matches—Keep them Going. 
The “Spelling mania” has been very contagious 
during two or three months past. One can hardly 
take up a newspaper, printed anywhere from Maine 
to Nebraska, without finding in it an account of 
one or more spelling matches. Probably not less 
than twenty thousand such contests have been held 
this year, in which an average of fifty persons have 
been directly engaged, and all of these million 
people, young and old, have performed a deal of 
studying over the right orthography of a very large 
number of words. Then an average of over 100 
persons have attended these matches, as spectators, 
and carefully watched the spelling of every word 
“put out,” so that at least 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 
people have improved their spelling ability to a 
considerable extent. We know that in a single lo¬ 
cality at least one hundred families were actively 
engaged, parents and children, morning, noon, and 
night, in going over and over the spelling books 
and lists of “ test words,” while in the shops, 
stores, and manufactories, the right spelling of this 
and that word has been the main topic of conversa¬ 
tion. Even in a barber-shop, the retailing of scan¬ 
dal and unimportant news has given place to spel¬ 
ling discussions ; and had not the “ Beecher Trial ” 
come in to claim extraordinary attention, perhaps 
three-fourths .of our whole population would have 
had “ spelling on the brain.” 
We look with a good deal of favor upon all this. 
Even if it stop right here, the influence will con¬ 
tinue many years. Everybody will be more careful 
about sending out letters and other written docu¬ 
ments defaced with badly spelled words, which al¬ 
ways give the impression of illiteracy. These 
matches have afforded much amusement, and that 
of a far more useful character than a majority of 
the entertainments commonly supplied. For ex¬ 
ample, take two benevolent societies we know of. 
One of them held a “ fair,” for which a lot of fancy 
articles, of nearly a useless character, were got up 
with much time and expense, and the attendants 
were dragooned into buying what they did not 
want, and had no earthly use for—all “ for the good 
of tho cause.” The ending, and chief attraction 
of the af-fair, was a sort of “ kissing bee.” The 
net proceeds were $65, including the income of a 
lottery ring-cake, aud lottery grab-bag. The other 
society had a spelling match, to which a few lead¬ 
ing citizens lent their influence as participants, and 
were followed by the young people generally. The 
only preparation was the useful spelling study in 
families. The net result of the quiet but amusing 
entertainment, was over $75 taken at the door. 
This last is only one of several thousand similar 
doubly useful enterprises of the present year. We 
sincerely hope the spelling campaign will reopen 
next autumn with increased energy, and also that 
the good old plan of choosing sides and spelling 
matches in all our public schools will be the order. 
They will furnish legitimate entertainment, having 
no unhealthful moral tone, and we shall, as a 
nation, become far better “spellers,” 
