330 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
An Insane Farmer ! 
What! insanity in the rural districts, among 
‘the bone and sinew ’ of the land ! It don’t sur¬ 
prise us to hear of speculators in Wall-st.** and 
other fast men and women in the city becoming 
deranged ; but out in the pure air and amid the 
peaceful scenes of the country, it fairly shocks 
us to hear of lunatics. And then, worse still, 
they say this man was driven mad by reading the 
Agriculturist. That brings the charge to our own 
door in a fearful way. He was upset, not by 
hard midnight study of mathematics, metaphys¬ 
ics, classics, physic, law, or divinity ; not in the 
vain search for the philosopher's stone, nor by 
trying to square the circle, or to invent perpetual 
motion; not by any of these exhausting labors, 
but simply by reading our quiet pages, at the cool 
of the day, just after shouting his harvest home. 
Not a real case of insanity 1 . Just wait, then, 
till we prove it. Here is the evidence : On the 
evening aforesaid, while reading this paper, he 
dropped it on the floor, and fell into a deep study, 
for half an hour, during which he spoke to no one. 
Then, suddenly rousing, he brought his clenched 
fist down upon the table with a blow which 
made everything rattle, and spoke in a loud 
voice: “ I’ll do it, I declare I’ll do it, and I’ll do 
it at once.” Nobody knew what he meant, and 
he explained himself to no one. But next morn¬ 
ing he went out before breakfast and drove down 
stakes all along the sides of the highway, and all 
about his door-yard. During the day, he was 
seen walking about the premises in front of the 
house, examing some old and half dead poplars, 
and was heard to mutter something like this : 
“You must come down, old gentlemen, you must 
come down and make room for your betters.” 
And some old stumps and piles of stones and 
rubbish he saluted in the same way. 
Not many days after, he called his son and his 
man John to dig holes by the road side, and in the 
yard where he had driven stakes. “ What pos¬ 
sesses the old man 1 ” they whispered to each 
other, as they delved away at the unaccustomed 
work. The holes being dug, he ordered the 
double team to be hitched up, and all parties drove 
to the woods. On the outskirts of the forest, the 
farmer found some fine young elms, maples and 
ash ; he bade the men dig them up carefully, and 
then haul them home in the wagon. This work 
he kept up for several days, laboring himself in 
digging up and setting out, and enjoyed the work 
exceedingly. By the road side in front of the 
house, he set rows of white elms, and by the 
street leading off at right angles to this, he set 
maples, mingling the hard and soft, and an occa¬ 
sional white ash. As the work proceeded from 
day to day, he would sit down and look this way 
and that, and up into the air, in a sort of revery. 
Perhaps the crack-brained man was thinking that 
the arching elms would make a weird-looking 
canopy over kis front avenue, and that the gold* 
and crimson and purple hues of the foliage on 
the side street would look quite fantastic in Au- 
rumn. His wife and children, looking out of the 
windows, occasionally, exclaimed to one another : 
‘What is father doing 1 ” “ Birnam-wood has 
come to Dunsinane,” laughingly shouted the old¬ 
est daughter, who had read Shakespeare at her 
boarding-school. Ever since he got his last agri¬ 
cultural paper, his head has been full of something 
new. 
This fit of transplanting was broken in upon 
for several days, while some of the ordinary field 
labor called for attention. During this time, he 
saemed perfectly rational, though his family no¬ 
ticed that on returning from his work at evening, 
j he would walk around among the newly-planted 
trees and mutter something to them. 
But after this work was finished, the disease 
set in again. He ordered the old poplars to be 
cut down and grubbed up, and the piles of stones 
and rubbish by the fence to be cleared away. He 
then went to a neighboring nursery, and bought 
several ornamental trees, roses and shrubs, and 
had them set out in his door-yard. His wife and 
daughters were delighted, and aided in the work 
of planting the bushes and vines ; though they 
rejoiced with trembling—it seemed so strange. 
All the neighbors admitted that the farmer was 
improving his homestead, and the family took 
new pride in their dwelling, and felt increasing 
attachment to farm life. But, then, what did it 
all mean 1 He never acted so before. Notone 
farmer in a hundred was ever known to do such 
things. There must be a screw loose somewhere. 
That agricultural paper upset him. 
Well, we can not now relate all the circum¬ 
stances ; but matters went on in this way for a 
long time. Meanwhile, the farmer repaired his 
house, and built' a new front fence, and had them 
both painted. In short, the whole premises, rear 
and front, put on an altered aspect. Most of his 
neighbors said he was crazy. But he replied, 
smiling, that he saw tokens of insanity in the 
neighborhood ; and he had hem deranged hereto¬ 
fore, he confessed; but now had come to his 
senses, and hoped to remain so the balance of 
his days. 
How to Fatten Poultry. 
This is a matter universally practiced—after a 
fashion—and yet but imperfectly understood by a 
great many people who fatten poultry both for 
the market and their own family consumption. 
The different varieties of poultry do not require 
fattening alike. We will give our plans and ex¬ 
perience in each. 
The Turkey. —Being a rambling, and insect 
feeding bird, the young ones should run at large 
when old enough to do so with safety, until the 
frost has killed off the insects of the season, such 
as grasshoppers, beetles and grubs. If acorns, 
beech nuts, and chestnuts, abound on or near 
your premises, they may still range on them until 
two or three weeks before they are required for 
market. Then they should be taken in, and con¬ 
fined in a roomy pen, clean, dry, comfortable, and 
well ventilated, and darkened during the day, so 
as to make a twilight —-just enough for them to 
see to eat their food, yet prevent them from gob¬ 
bling, strutting, and fighting—for turkeys are apt 
to quarrel vehemently at times, when they have 
nothing else to do. Their proper food then is, 
any kind of grain ground into meal and thoroughly 
cooked, or if fed whole also boiled until it be¬ 
comes soft and will easily mash. With either 
the cooked meal or whole grain also cooked, 
should be mixed, say one fourth in quantity, boiled 
potatoes, carrots, or beets—carrots and potatoes 
are best. These may be put into a common swill 
barrel, and if you have skimmed milk, or butter¬ 
milk instead of water to mix with them, so as to 
reduce the whole mass to the consistency of a 
thin mash, so much the better, as milk is very 
palatable and fattening. If this mixture slightly 
ferments, all the better, provided it does not sour. 
Have some light troughs made of common six 
inch wide boards nailed together V fashion, set¬ 
ting in standards made of bits of board 8 or 10 
inches wide, and l£ or 2 feet long, placed edge¬ 
wise on the ground, with V's cut in them to re¬ 
ceive the troughs—all well nailed together. Have 
also a trough of water, or milk if you have it to 
spare, near by ; also a box of small gravel at hand I 
from which they can help themselves—as tur¬ 
keys like gravel in their crops, let their food be 
what it may. A box of broken charcoal—broken 
into bits the size of acorns, or corn, or there¬ 
abouts—will be profitable to add to these, char¬ 
coal being healthy and palatable to them. You 
will be surprised to see the thrift of your birds 
thus treated, and they will fatten in half the time, 
and at half the expense as when fed on whole 
raw grain, and running at large. There is a 
choice in grains—Indian corn, barley, shrunken 
wheat (good wheat is too expensive), rye and 
buckwheat—and if all of these are mixed in about 
equal proportions, with a few oats, are the best. 
Oats are chaffy, and there is little fattening quali¬ 
ty in them, especially when fed whole and dry. 
No salt, o*f course, is needed. It will hurt poul¬ 
try, while it will benefit pigs, sheep and cattle. 
In killing turkeys, if all are not wanted at 
once,select the fattest.as they will not fatten equal¬ 
ly, and feed the leaner ones a few days 
longer, or until they are ready for slaughter. The 
flesh will thus be found fat, delicate, and deli¬ 
cious in flavor, and much superior to that fed on 
raw grain, and running at large. The reason 
for not feeding whole grain is, that it must be 
cooked for mastication in the crop—a labor taxing 
the physical capacity of the bird heavily, and ex¬ 
pending much of its nutriment in the operation. 
Sixpence worth of fuel for cooking will save half 
a dollar’s waste of flesh in the bird itself, while 
the time and manual labor consumed in the pro¬ 
cess is next to nothing in a well ordered house¬ 
hold. A common iron boiler, which every farm¬ 
er’s family ought to have, will answer all,purposes. 
Chickens. -^Serve these exactly according to 
the above directions, only that they require less 
room ; but that room must be equally well venti¬ 
lated and perches must be also made for them 
to roost upon. There should be just light enough 
for a cock to crow by in the morning, and noth¬ 
ing more, as excessive crowing is as fatal to a 
young cock’s fattening as is a turkey’s gobbling 
and strutting. A change of food by an occasion¬ 
al scattering of whole dry grains of soma sort 
may be given to chickens, and also turkeys, but 
they will after a little time prefer the mash, as 
above described, and to much greater advantage. 
We may also add that with both chickens and 
turkeys an occasional, say daily, ration of cab¬ 
bage leaves, or turnip tops may be given them. 
They like these as a change or salad. They 
are also palatable, and although there is little fat¬ 
tening quality in them, they promote digestion, 
and do them good, though not absolutely neces¬ 
sary. 
Geese.— Confine and feed them as with tur¬ 
keys and chickens, but give them cabbage leaves, 
or turnip tops daily, and plenty of clean water in 
a large trough, well washed out every day. They 
need no roosting poles, of course. 
Ducks. —Treat them like the geese, exactly, 
with the daily addition of a small quantity of flesh 
either raw or cooked, if convenient and cheap. 
Tallow chandler’s scraps are good, well chopped 
up, and cheaper than any other flesh, unless 
butcher’s offal can be obtained. Ducks are great 
flesh eaters, when they can get it. Fish are bad, 
as they give the flesh a fishy taste. 
Without ventilation and cleanliness so impor¬ 
tant in fattening, no perfectly good poultry flesh can 
be obtained. We know it is quite common with 
many people—particularly country tavern keep¬ 
ers—to cram their chickens and other poultry into 
narrow and close boxes, or coops, throw whole 
grain in any quantity upon the floor, with a sau¬ 
cer or little basin of water once a day, and think 
they will fatten well on that. But they are won- 
