AMERICAN AGrRIC U LTURI ST. 
13 
an implement of draft, with all the evil of packing 
the earth above and below. Wherever it is ap¬ 
plied, we find rotary motion. This is its forte , as 
lifting is of the human frame, and pulling is of 
the ox. It turns the crank of the steamer, the 
wheels of the locomotive and of the manufactory. 
It takes to rotary motion as naturally, as a duck 
does to water, and it can only be put to draft, at 
a great loss of power. 
This point has been overlooked by the inven¬ 
tors, who have turned their attention to cultiva¬ 
tion by steam. They have treated steam as a 
beast of draft, and have sought to yoke it up to 
the plow, an implement suggested by the ox, and 
destined to go out of use with the ox, in field cul¬ 
ture. This oversight has, thus far, vitiated all 
efforts at improvement, by using this new pow¬ 
er in the field. We hear of steam plows, both 
those hitched on to a locomotive, and those 
drawn by a stationary engine. But these are 
bungling contrivances, and not at all what is 
wanted. 
Of course, we must have a locomotive that the 
engineer can guide at pleasure over the field. 
Behind the hind wheels there might be suspended 
a transvere cylinder, three or four feet in diam¬ 
eter, and six or eight feet long. This cylinder 
should be armed with steel claws, or tine points, 
spirally arranged, and long enough and close 
enough when the cylinder is set in motion, to 
tear and toss into a light smooth seed bed the 
whole mass of the surface soil to the depth of a 
foot or more. The ends of the cylinder should 
just follow the wheel tracks. It should also be 
under the control of the engineer, to be raised or 
lowered—to revolve faster or slower at his pleas¬ 
ure. This is the implement, the coming farmer 
needs, an implement to which steam is admira¬ 
bly adapted, and which shall do up, in cheaper and 
better style, all the work which the plow, har¬ 
row, and cultivator accomplish. Invention will 
accomplish nothing with steam in the field, until 
it abandons the plow, and looks after some sort 
of rotator to rasp up the earth, and mix sod, ma¬ 
nure, and subsoil,into one finely comminuted mass. 
This will avoid the essential defects of the plow, 
and give in the field, at a single operation, a seed 
bed, as nicely prepared, as we have in the garden. 
I trust the mechanical genius is now living, that 
will get a glimmering of the great invention of the 
age, from these blinks of my lantern. This coun¬ 
try is well fitted for its achievements. Its broad 
prairies and bottom lands, and even the worn out 
plains and meadows of the sea board, would 
teem with new fertility and beauty, under its tri¬ 
umphant march. 
- »-4 --- •»- 
“ Waste Time.” —Professor Agassiz was im¬ 
portuned to interrupt his scientific investigations 
and go to a distant town to deliver a lecture be¬ 
fore a lyceum. As an extra inducement he was 
assured that the Society would pay him liberally, 
to which he replied: “ That is no inducement; I 
can not afford to waste time in making money.” 
How many waste time solely to make money. 
Cincinnati Spare-bibs. —In referring to a 
statement that a large number of young ladies in 
Pork-opolis (pork-city) had recently been married 
away to other places, an exchange dryly remarks 
that: “No other city is so well able to supply 
spar eribs in the universe.” 
“ Have you read my last speech V said a vain 
orator to a friend. “ I hope so,” was the reply. 
A man, who had complained much of the want 
of eddication in the schoolmaster, kept his son 
f- •'m the school to work a couple of days, and 
sent him with the following excuse for absence : 
“ Keptuhumsortinlaters.” 
—:- 1*-* »- »- 
Written for the American Agriculturist—Prize Articles. 
Farm Inclosures—Fencing —No. I. 
It is no new thing to say, that the proper in¬ 
closure of our farms is one of the rigidly indis¬ 
pensable facts with which, among others, the 
American husbandman has to deal. Whether 
we commence a farm in the woods, or on the 
prairie, a substantial, permanent inclosing of the 
cultivated ground is the first thing to be secured, 
if we keep teams and cattle, sheep or swine, as 
a part of our out-door economy. Or purchasing a 
farm already subdued, the chances are three to 
one that immediate repairs of the old, or a con¬ 
siderable outlay for new fencing have to be en¬ 
countered, before the premises are thoroughly se¬ 
cure from the depredations of even our own ani¬ 
mals, or from those of our lawless neighbors, 
which run abroad, free-commoners, upon the high¬ 
way—according to immemorial custom in this 
vaunted land of liberty and equality. 
It is useless to go into a calculation by statistics 
of the enormous, and in a great majority‘of cases, 
useless amount of fencing erected and built on 
our farms ; but any one with a few hours’ labor in 
examination will readily find, that the cost of not 
only new fences, but the annual repairs of old 
ones, amount to a sum in the course of an ordi¬ 
nary life that he has little dreamed of. Therefore, 
in discussing the subject intelligently, we have to 
go over a territory as wide and diversified as that 
of our entire agricultural range, and examine all 
the material of which our fences are now, or are 
hereafter likely to be constructed, taking several 
chapters to embrace and treat it in a proper man¬ 
ner ; and this we shall strive to do in as thorough, 
economical, and substantial a way as our oppor¬ 
tunities and observation will permit. 
A permanently systematic mode of fencing, our 
American farmers have scarcely yet adopted—the 
make-shift method not having as yet gone out of 
use. On stony soils, after the first series of wooden 
fences (which were laid up in the superabundance 
of timber our fathers had to cut away) had de¬ 
cayed, the loose stones which encumbered the 
soil supplied their places. With great toil, and 
through a long series of years, the common stone 
walls were gradually constructed, and made, after 
a fashion, the inclosures around and within their 
farms. These were extended, or multiplied, as 
the quantity of material at hand supplied the ne¬ 
cessity of sufficient inclosure, or the superabun¬ 
dance of it tempted them in getting rid of it, to 
cut up, and sub-divide their fields into larger or 
smaller inclosures, in many cases much beyond 
what the most economical working of their lands 
demanded—in short, men built walls to get the 
stones off' their fields. This will sufficiently ac¬ 
count for the enormous quantity of stone walls 
which disfigure so many farms in the older States 
where stones abound. In a vast many instances, 
if a correct calculation were made, of the 
amount of cost in labor at hiring prices, it exceeds 
what the land, walls and all, will now sell for. 
Nor is that all. So imperfectly and rudely have 
the walls been built, that they need annual re¬ 
pairs, caused by the dilapidations by frost and 
accidental falling, and their annual repairs entail 
a tax upon their owmers, creating a serious draw¬ 
back on their incomes and profits. 
Other lands, well wooded at first and free from 
surface stones, were inclosed on clearing, with 
long lines of log fences, enoimously wasteful if 
the timber were wmrth anything, but serving a 
good purpose for many years, according to the du¬ 
rability of the timber itself. They were afterwards 
replaced by rails, or posts and boards, and are so 
continued to the present time ; while considera¬ 
ble portions of the farms are yet held in wood, 
reserves—dead property—for future fencing. 
Among these are embraced wide tracts of pine 
land, where the first fences decaying, and “ pine 
stumps were rotting out,” enormous quantities 
of them have been drawn out by stump macnines 
and turned into effectual and durable fences—the 
most unsightly things imaginable, but answering 
the double purpose of ridding the land of their 
presence, and putting them where they will be 
useful, almost if not quite a lifetime. 
There, again, are our prairies. Those con- 
tigious to cheap timber were easily fenced at first, 
but decaying in time, a new supply of fencing ma¬ 
terial has to be hunted up and provided at large 
expense ; while new and wide-spread prairies 
have to be furnished with material from a dis¬ 
tance, from the beginning—posts and boards, or 
rails, as the case may be, but alike perishable 
and expensive. All these have to be obtained ; 
and while the wooded regions furnish their own 
material cheap and abundant, the labor is still 
expensive in all, their repairs and looking af¬ 
ter is a perpetual tax on the farmer, inexorable 
as the taxation put upon him by town, county or 
State, and much exceeding it in annual amount. 
Such, then, is the present condition of our farm 
fencing throughout the country; and although, 
from the immense extent of territory we occupy, 
we have vast tracts of land which may supply 
fencing material at a cheap rate for many years 
to come, there are large sections of the country, 
and in them some of our most valuable agricul¬ 
tural lands, where the material is already ex¬ 
hausted, and the why and wherefore of our fu¬ 
ture inclosures are becoming, or have already 
become a formidable subject for calculation. 
A preliminary question, as to the extent or ne¬ 
cessity of the fencing which our farms require, 
may be considered, and is not out of place 
in discussing the subject. By the recent con¬ 
struction of the multitudinous railways through¬ 
out the country, our agriculture is becoming more 
divided into distinct and separate branches. We 
can now appropriate our lands to those products 
to which they are best fitted, or can most proper¬ 
ly be devoted. In past times he was considered 
a poor farmer who did not produce on his own 
lands, every article of food which it would pro¬ 
duce that his family needed for their support— 
be the cost of producing it what it might. Inter¬ 
change of commodity was more difficult than 
new ; markets were distant, and the cost of trans¬ 
portation, and the trouble of selling one thing and 
buying another was too great; hence the farmer 
had to raise his own supplies for himself. Now 
the case is altered. The dairyman whose lands 
are well fitted for making butter and cheese often- 
er buys his own corn and wheat, and frequently 
his beef and pork, cheaper than he can raise it. 
He makes more money in his increased quantity 
of butter or cheese, than if he dovoted but part of 
his land and labor to such purposes. Another, or, 
a grain farm, finds his interest better promoted in 
producing all the grains he ^an, and of fatting beet 
and pork. Others breed rattle, and rear them ; 
while others graze and fat beef, or raise sheep and 
wool. The planting States have long pursued 
such practice, and from persisting in it, we have 
reason to suppose that they but study their own 
interests in such a course. Particular circum¬ 
stances, to be sure, may vary this division of ag¬ 
ricultural labor in various parts of the country, 
where the soil and markets are adapted alike to 
