1870.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
335 
growth of clover, as compared to 90 lbs. as the 
result of a year’s growth of corn. Now, when 
both crops are consumed on Ihc farm, wc shall 
not be far wrong in assuming that the manure 
from the acre of clover (including the roots left 
in the soil) is worth as much again as the ma¬ 
nure from the acre of corn. And the same 
may be said of peas. A crop of peas of 80 
bushels per acre will afford manure, including 
stalks, worth as much as a crop of corn, includ¬ 
ing stalks, of 00 bushels per acre. If the climate 
is capable of producing 90 bushels of shelled 
corn per acre, provided the soil is rich enough, 
I think that until this point is attained, I should 
grow less corn and more peas and clover; and 
I would keep fewer pigs and more sheep. 
A farmer in St. Joseph, Mo., writes: “ Will 
you please tell me through the Agriculturist, 
why so many sows die farrowing, and what is 
best to do for them to prevent its occurrence ? 
As many as halt a dozen have died in this im¬ 
mediate neighborhood, although they seemed 
as healthy as usual.’’-“And a gentleman from 
Canada writes me that there has been an unu¬ 
sual mortality among the pigs this season all 
through the Province. The wonder to me is, 
not that so many pigs die, but that so many 
survive the wretched treatment that they re¬ 
ceive. But I must be careful what I say on this 
point, for I have just received a letter from a 
Doctor in Tennessee, censuring me very severe¬ 
ly for saying that I was “ not sorry that hog- 
cholera and other fatal diseases are on the in¬ 
crease.” And indeed I must say that I rather 
regret making such a remark. No one has a 
keener sympathy for a farmer who loses an 
animal than I have. I, myself, have lost too 
many horses, cattle, and sheep, not to know 
how sad a thing it is to see any of our domestic 
animals die. It is not merely the money loss, 
severe as that sometimes is; and the pain is 
greatly aggravated by the feeling that something 
has been neglected that might have warded off 
the disease or prevented the accident. So when 
I wrote the atrocious sentiment that the Doctor 
quotes, I did not really mean what I said. I 
fancy that just at that moment a whiff of air 
from a dirty hog pen must have reached me, or 
some wretched, half-starved, mongrel sow must 
have got into the garden or snapped up a whole 
coop of chickens. No, I am not glad that dis¬ 
eases are on the increase, but I shall certainly 
be very glad if they produce a change in our 
management of pigs. This Tennessee Doctor 
says that the disease is not inherited, which I 
am very glad to hear; and that it is not caused 
by high feeding nor low feeding, but simply and 
solely by compelling or allowing the pigs to 
sleep week after week and month after month 
in the same bed with no change of bedding. 
He thinks little can be done to cure the disease, 
but much to prevent it. “ The old beds,” he 
bays, “ should be destroyed and new ones made 
occasion ally. Throw lime into their beds once a 
week. Give them sulphur and lime in their 
food once a week. These remedies with a suf¬ 
ficiency of feed, well administered, will suffice 
to keep them healthy.”—After all, the Doctor 
and I do not differ essentially. What I rec¬ 
ommended was to keep the pigs themselves 
clean, the pens, bedding and troughs clean, to 
give them what ashes, salt, superphosphate, or 
sulphur they will eat of their own accord, to 
let them have the run of a clover pasture, with 
■access to fresh water at all times. Or if neces¬ 
sarily confined, let the pens be large and well 
ventilated, and cleaned out every day , using 
plenty of that cheapest and best of all disin¬ 
fectants, dry earth. Cleanliness with proper 
food and regular feeding, would do more to pre¬ 
vent diseases than all the medicine in the world. 
My Diehl wheat turned out better than I ex¬ 
pected. It was thin on the ground and the 
straw was short, and it looked as though it 
would not yield over 20 bushels per acre. We 
thrashed as wc drew it in from the field. We 
commenced at ten minutes to three P. M., and 
by night had the whole field of ten acres 
thrashed. We had 27G bushels, and there are 
the second rakings still to thrash, which will 
probably bring the yield up to 29 bushels per 
acre. The field is the one I “ fall-fallowed ” in 
the autumn of 1808. It was sown to spring 
barley in 18G9, and yielded about 50 bushels 
per acre. It was then plowed and sown to 
winter wheat without any manure. It was in 
fine order, but the heavy growth of barley 
straw in the wet season of 1869, took the lion’s 
share of the plant-food, rendered available by 
the fallowing, and left the soil too poor for a 
good crop of wheat. All that was needed to 
have given me 40 or 50 bushels per acre was a 
little manure. The season, the variety of wheat, 
and the mechanical condition of the land were 
all capable of producing such a crop, and I shall 
not be satisfied until I get my land rich enough 
to average 40 bushels in a good season. 
When you have force enough, and the grain 
is dry enough to grind, thrashing wheat as drawn 
in from the field, is, I think, much the better 
plan. If you have barn room enough, thrash 
outside and put the straw in the barn. I could 
not have put that wheat into a stack or into the 
barn any faster than we drew it to the machine, 
and there is consequently no greater risk from 
the weather. If a shower comes on, you are 
stopped just as effectually in the one case as in 
the other. It requires two teams and three 
wagons—one wagon at the machine, one going 
back and forth, and one in the field—one man 
to pitch, two to load, and one to unload. And 
in thrashing from a stack or mow, it always 
takes two men and sometimes three, to get the 
grain to the machine. So that one or two extra 
men are all that are required to thrash as you 
draw in from the field. And yet I have known 
large farmers draw wheat into the barn one 
day and thrash it the next! If wheat, and 
more especially barley, iS stacked or put into 
the barn, it should not be thrashed until it has 
got through “sweating.” 
In this section we shall have a splendid crop 
of apples. The trees are loaded, and the fruit, 
where the orchards have not been neglected, is 
large and remarkably fair and free from spots. 
Even Virgalieu pears, on vigorous growing 
trees, are, in some cases, as large and fair as they 
used to be twenty years ago. My Northern 
Spy apple orchard, next to the Cotswold lambs, 
is my pet and delight. And all the more so, be¬ 
cause the variety has been generally condemn¬ 
ed by the farmers in the neighborhood, as un¬ 
profitable. Scores of people have urged me 
to graft the trees with Baldwins, but I recollect¬ 
ed the decision arrived at many years ago at a 
Bornological meeting held during the State 
Fair at Saratoga, where this variety was under 
discussion. I think it was J. J. Thomas, who 
summed up the different opinions expressed, in 
his usual terse and happy way: “ It is a long¬ 
time in coming into bearing, but worth waiting 
for.” I have between two and three hundred 
trees, and if they do well they w'ill afford a nice 
little income. There is a horse barn on one 
side of the orchard, and the manure from it 
finds its way to some of the trees near it. These 
trees are not only larger and more vigorous, 
with darker foliage, but also came into bearing 
earlier and had far more and better fruit than 
those not so favored. “ You should check their 
growth to throw them into bearing,” -was ad¬ 
vice frequently given. Depend upon it, a bet¬ 
ter way is to thin out the tops freely, and give 
the roots a liberal supply of plant-food. II' 
kept in grass, which may or may not be the 
better plan, top-dress with manure every year 
and keep the grass closely cropped by sheep. 
To keep an orchard in grass and remove the hay 
is suicidal. To keep it in grass and top-dress 
liberally, and consume the grass on the land, it 
strikes me must be quite as good for the trees as 
plowing and cropping the orchard—and I do not 
see why it would not be as good for them as if 
the land was kept fallow. But do. not forget to 
top-dress every year. My sheep do not touch 
the trees; they eat up every wormy apple that 
falls, and are in every way better than pigs. 
A Western farmer crossed a thorough-bred 
Essex sow with a Chester White, and had a 
very uneven and everyway undesirable litter of 
pigs. I do not know what else he could expect. 
He says he will for the future confine himself 
to the thorough-bred Essex, and will not cross 
these breeds again. Had he crossed the other 
way he would have had a different result. This 
mania for crossing without a distinct object, is 
sheer folly. One of my neighbors had a large, 
coarse, Chester County sow that he crossed 
with a thorough-bred Essex, and had a splendid 
litter of pigs. A young sow from this litter was 
again crossed with a thorough-bred Essex, and 
now has a litter of three-quarter bloods that 
are “perfect beauties.” 
Of all poor crops, save us from a poor crop of 
barley. I am no worse off than my neighbors, 
for many of them have had to cut their barley 
with scythes or with the mowing machine. It 
was too short to be cut with a reaper. I plowed 
under a heavy growth of clover last fall, and 
sowed the land to barley this spring without 
plowing, merely cultivating the surface. Geddes 
said I should have no barley—the land would 
be so rich. But I told him there was no danger 
of that, and so it has proved. I have not yet 
thrashed, but I do not believe it will go over 25 
bushels per acre. The trouble was, that we had 
so much rain in the spring, the barley could 
not be sown in good season. 
Those farmers are fortunate, as sensible peo¬ 
ple usually are, who sowed their timothy seed 
on the wheat last fall, instead of waiting to sow 
it with the clover in the spring. Nearly all the 
spring sown timothy and clover in this section 
is a comparative failure, and farmers are plow¬ 
ing their wheat stubble and going to sow wheat 
again. I have known instances where the sec¬ 
ond crop of wheat was better than the first, es¬ 
pecially on rather lieav 3 r soil. The land was 
plowed immediately after harvest, and thorough¬ 
ly cultivated and harrowed at intervals until it 
was time to sow; then plowed again, and the 
seed drilled in. 
Never was there a better season for corn. The 
weather has been so hot that corn on good 
land has made an astonishing growth. The 
Deacon has been hoeing and cultivating with 
unusual energy, and some parts of his field arc 
splendid; but lie has half an acre or so of clay 
land where the crop is nearly a failure, and 
this will pull down the average. I tell him 
