AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Designed to improve all Classes interested in Soil Culture . 
AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, THE MOST USEFUL, AND THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN —'WASHINGTON 
©IfcAWCJE JUDD, A. M., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
mfrnurnm w m 
$1.00 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. 
SINGLE NUMBERS 10 CENTS. 
VOL. XVIII.—No. 7.] 
NEW-YOEK, JULY, 1859. 
[NEW SERIES—No. 150. 
^"Office at 189 Water-st., (Near Fulton-st.) 
^“Contents, Terms, <fcc., on pajje 224. 
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1859, 
by Orange Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District 
Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
New-York. 
IpF * N. IS.—Every Journal is invited freely to copy 
any and all desirable articles, and no use or advantage 
win be taken of the Copy-Right, wherever each article 
or illustration is duly accredited to the American Agri¬ 
culturist. ORANGE JUDD, Proprietor. 
July. 
Hark ! where the sweeping scythe now rips along; 
Each sturdy mower emulous and strong; 
Whose writhing form meridian heat defies, 
Bends o’er his work and every sinew tries, 
Prostrates the waving treasure at his feet, 
But spares the rising clover short and sweet. 
Come Health ! come Jollity 1 light footed come ; 
Here hold your revels, and make this your home. 
Bloomfield’s Farmer’s Boy. 
Was there ever a more charming sight than the 
blooming meadow, as it greets the eyes of the 
mower on this bright Summer morning! Seethe 
broad expanse of (lowering grasses, each beauti¬ 
ful after its kind; the 
purple plumes of the 
herds-grass, the delicate 
spray of the red-top and 
the furze, the white-caps 
of the clover, nestling in 
the under growth, and 
all glistening with crys¬ 
tals of dew—a more glo¬ 
rious array than ever 
adorned a bride of the 
Orient. No wonder that 
he pauses as the sun 
comes over the hills, and 
sighs that so much o( 
beauty must go down be¬ 
fore the remorseless 
scythe, like the dissolv¬ 
ing views in some scene 
of enchantment. There 
is a melancholy cadence 
in the ringing of his 
steel, as he sharpens it, 
for it sounds the death- 
knell of the flowers, the 
butter cups, and the wild 
geraniums, the blue iris, and the red and yellow 
lilies, and the thousand beautiful creations that 
dwell with the grasses. This is the esthetic 
view of the hay field, very appropriately taken at 
sunrise, when all the senses are refreshed by 
recent sleep, and are keenly alive to the sweet 
influence of Nature. 
As the sun advances to the meridian, and the 
scythe grows weary of its work of destruction, 
we fall into a more utilitarian mood. How long 
shall human muscles strain over the scytiie, in 
the fiercest heat of the Summer 1 Of the mil¬ 
lions of acres devoted to the hay crop, not one in 
fifty is yet cut by horse power. For some ten 
years, our most skillful mechanics have been at 
work solving the problem of the mower, endeav¬ 
oring to transfer to brute muscles, this most ex¬ 
hausting labor of the farm. Machines, strong, du¬ 
rable, effective, easily worked, and economical, 
have been abundantly tested, and are found to be 
almost everything desirable. A pair of horses 
will readily do the work of eight men with their 
scythes. The horse mower and reaper put the 
hay and grain harvest in the power of the farmer, 
so that he can cut and gather them, at the best 
season of maturity, and in the best condition. 
And yet hut a small part of the farming popula¬ 
tion are waked op to their value. There are tens 
of thousands of cultivators that would save the 
cost of a mower in a single season, and yet they 
hesitate to make the investment. 
How long shall farmers be content with the 
present small yield of hay, and grass 1 These are 
less than a third of what might easily he gained 
from the same area. Of the land devoted to pas¬ 
ture, it too often takes four acres to carry a cow 
through the season. There are districts in Eng¬ 
land, where an acre ofland furnishes an abundant 
supply for a cow or bullock, arid occasional farms 
in our own country do quite as well. Our 
window overlooks a small pasture of an acre and- 
a-half, that will carry two cows through the Sum¬ 
mer. Three years ago it produced nothing but 
sour wild grasses, fit only for bedding. Now it 
has a luxuriant growth of herds-grass, white clo¬ 
ver, and blue top. The only ameliorating influ¬ 
ences that have been brought to bear upon it are, 
drainage, a top dressing of ditch mud and soil, 
and a few pounds of grass seed. It has not been 
plowed or manured. The rent of the present 
season, twenty-four dollars, will more than pay | 
for the whole expense of reclaiming. There are 
millions of acres of pasture land, that only need 
to be relieved of their water, and to be sowed 
with grass seed, to double the amount of their 
grass, and to greatly improve its quality. Why 
should a farmer be content to keep ten cows, 
'when he has land enough to feed twenty 1 Close 
cropped pastures where no grass is suffered to 
go to seed, can not be expected to perpetuate 
themselves for ever. 
And the meadow land stands quite as much in 
need of improvement. The average yield for the 
country is less than a ton of hay to the acre. 
Indeed it may be doubted if there is a single 
state that will surpass this average. Yet there 
are farms that will average two tuns to the aere, 
and many well treated fields that produce three 
and four. It is certainly much easier to fill the 
barn with hay, from a small area of heavy grass, 
than from a hundred acres yielding half as many 
tons. It is painful to think of the unpaid toil ex¬ 
pended upon these half tilled acres. We natur¬ 
ally think of it now, as we are sweating under 
the meridian sun, when 
it is bad enough to work 
even at two dollars a day 
or more, in hard coin. 
There are several rem¬ 
edies suggested for these 
lean meadows. Many 
of them need draining, 
and there is no radical 
cure of their infirmities, 
short of this. With' this 
alone many of them 
would yield twice the 
quantity of grass, and 
would be more than doub¬ 
led in value, for the hay 
would be of much better 
quality, and the land 
would be in condition to 
make the best use of 
every load of manure 
put upon it, for a gener¬ 
ation to come. Others 
need breaking up and 
manuring. They have 
been in grass for ten 
years or longer, and the crop has been uniformly 
removed, and nothing returned. Is it strange, 
that they have grown tired of the regimen 1 
Others will be helped by top-dressing and sow¬ 
ing with grass seeds. These seeds catch readily 
with surface dressings of compost or stable ma¬ 
nure, and many fields can be made to yield dou¬ 
ble with this treatment alone. 
The yield of hay at the last census, was a lit¬ 
tle short of fourteen millions of tons, worth at 
least one hundred and forty millions of dollars. 
Could the productiveness of our meadow-s be 
doubied, it would make a very handsome addition 
to the national wealth. 
