1873.] 
American Agriculturist. 
135 
seven weeks old for double the price of common 
pigs. The three that I kept myself have been 
fed on Indian meal and one fourth bran stirred 
with cold water about as thick as it will run. 
They have also had a few potatoes. They had 
some milk when young, but none for some 
time. After eating their swill at night I usually 
give them two ears of com each.” 
This is a very good showing. Mr. T. seems 
to think that the pigs have not had extra good 
food. But I do not see how it could have been 
better, unless the pigs had had more milk and 
the meal had been cooked. After all, there is 
almost as much in the feeding as in the feed— 
and in some cases more. I do not know Mr.T., 
but I think he knows how to feed pigs. Those 
‘‘two ears of corn” at night remind me of one 
of my own pet practices. In fattening pigs, 
the great point is to get them to eat all they can 
digest. And I find that after the pigs have 
eaten as much cooked or uncooked meal as they 
will, if you throw a few ears of corn into the 
pen they are greedily devoured. Then those 
“few potatoes” fed, I have no doubt with equal 
good judgment,probably contributed somewhat 
to this remarkable growth. Mr. T. promises to 
send me the live and dead weights of the pigs 
when he kills them. 
Mr. Farquliar, of Maryland, writes that he 
has six acres of apple and peach orchard—the 
apple-trees just coming into profitable bearing. 
The land has been cultivated every year or 
every other year since planted. “I wish,” he 
says, “ to plow it again this year, and also de¬ 
sire to have my hogs run in it after the fruit be¬ 
gins falling. Is there not some crop that could 
be profitably grown between the trees as food 
for the hogs, to be eaten where it grows?” 
The great objection to raising any crop among 
fruit trees, especially peaches, is that the roots 
of the growing crop take the moisture out of 
the land and evaporate it into the atmosphere. 
On the 27th and 28th of June, 1870, Lawes and 
Gilbert took samples from each nine inches of 
soil, to a depth of ty feet, from land on which 
a crop of barley was growing, and also from 
fallow land adjoining, and determined the 
amount of water in each sample. The follow¬ 
ing table shows the percentage of water in the 
land at different depths: 
Fallcno land. Barley land. Difference. 
1st nine inches.20.36 11.91 8.45 
2cl “ “ 29.53 19.32 10.21 
3d “ “ 34.84 22. S3 12.01 
4th “ “ 34.32 25.09 9.23 
5th “ “ 31.31 26.98 4.33 
6th “ “ .33.55 -- 7.17 
- 26.83 - 
Mean.30.65 22.09 8.56 
Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert say: “As the ex¬ 
cavation proceeded, barley roots were observed 
to have extended to a depth of between four 
and five feet, and the clayey subsoil appeared to 
be much more disintegrated, and much drier, 
where the roots had penetrated than where 
they had not.” 
1 have not time to comment now on these im¬ 
portant results, further than to say that they 
show that the barley crop must have pumped 
up and evaporated 1035 tons of water per acre ! 
Farmers sometimes say in words, and more 
frequently in action, that if an orchard is plowed 
in the spring and then allowed to grow up 
witli weeds, and the -weeds are turned under, 
nothing is lost. The weeds manure the land. 
But while there is some truth in this, they for¬ 
get that a good crop of weeds will pump up as 
much water from the soil as a crop of barley. 
If anything is to be grown in a peach orchard 
it should be grown in the autumn and early 
spring. During the summer months, while the 
trees are growing rapidly and producing fruit, 
they need abundance of moisture. Nothing 
should be allowed to grow amongst them—not 
even a weed. If anything is grown in autumn 
and spring, it should be eaten off before the dry 
weather of summer, or else it should be mown 
and allowed to lie on the surface for a mulch. 
I do not think Mr. F. can “eat his cake and 
have it.” I can think of no crop that can be 
grown so as to be ready for the pigs at the time 
the fruit is falling. I should think winter 
vetches would stand the climate of Maryland, 
and if so they would be the best crop to grow 
for feeding off in May or the first part of June. 
As I have frequently said, I am trying the ex¬ 
periment of keeping my own Northern Spy 
apple orchard in grass. I have top-dressed it 
every year with manure, and keep the grass 
eaten down close with sheep. So far I am well 
satisfied with the result. There is an acre of 
dwarf pear-trees in the same field. These are 
fenced off, and the land is kept fallow. There 
are four or five Northern Sp 3 r trees that are 
fenced off also, and these are in the fallowed 
land. I can not see that they grow better or 
bear more fruit than the trees in the grass. 
The best time to apply manure as a top¬ 
dressing for grass is probably early in the spring. 
But I have been astonished to find how rapidly 
the manure w r orks down among the grass (or 
how soon the grass works up into the manure) 
and disappears, no matter when applied. 
Some farmers hesitate to top-dress their grass 
land for fear it may give the grass a rank taste. 
If the manure is evenly spread and thoroughly 
harrowed there is no difficulty of this kind. 
Sheep and cows will eat the top-dressed grass 
in preference to that in the same field where no 
manure has been applied. 
“Better not tell that story in the Agricultur¬ 
ist ,” remarks the Deacon, “ about an acre of 
barley pumping up a thousand tons of water. 
Nobody will believe it.” 
“ You mean, Deacon, that you do not believe 
it.” 
“Well, I can’t say that I do. In the first 
place, the land during our hot weather in June 
is pretty dry, and I do not see how you are go¬ 
ing to get a thousand tons of water out of it if 
it is not there.” 
“ But it is there. The analyses showed that 
in the fallow land there was 3,220 tons of 
water; and in the land where the barley grew 
2,185 tons. You must recollect that an acre of 
dry soil, three inches deep, weighs 1,000,000 
lbs., and when wet about one eighth more. We 
are dealing with large figures, arid must not be 
hasty in jumping at conclusions.” 
“ I agree with you there,” says the Deacon, 
■who always manages to get the last word. 
What I meant to have said was that even this 
dry soil where the barley grew, and during a 
time of unusual drouth, still contained a very 
large quantity of water, and that perhaps I was 
hardly warranted in saying that the injurious 
effects of cropping orchards was due to the 
amount of water which the plants evaporated 
from the soil. It would seem as though there 
was still plenty of water within reach of the 
roots. But it may be that it is water containing 
an insufficient quantity of plant-food, and that 
when an orchard is kept in grass closely cropped 
and liberally manured, the roots of the grass 
and the roots of the trees both are able to find 
all the food and all the water they need. In 
other words, manure to a certain extent is a 
safeguard against drouth. 
— ^ Q RM —— ►—■ 1 • 
Permanent Pastures. 
We can have pastures that will improve every 
year without the plow. There are thousands of 
farms in the cheese districts of England where 
the plow is not used at all in the pastures. 
There is a soft velvety turf, the result of a cen¬ 
tury of close feeding. There are millions of 
acres of pasture in the trans-Missouri country 
fed for ages by the buffalo and the antelope, 
growing richer every year by the grazing of 
these animals and the decay of the buffalo grass. 
In the best grazing districts of New York and 
Western Connecticut, there are large farms kept 
in permanent pasture, and growing more fertile 
every year by the feeding of beef-cattle. The 
only fertilizer applied beside the droppings 
of the cattle is an occasional dressing of 
plaster, at the rate of a bushel to the acre. 
Some of these farms will carry a bullock to the 
acre, and leave a thick mat of grass upon the 
sod when the bullocks are sold off in the fall. 
The store cattle are bought in the market in the 
spring, and put in the pastures as soon.as grass 
starts sufficiently to feed them. The cattle in¬ 
crease in weight, and in the quality of the beef, 
during the summer, and are sold to the butchers 
as soon as they are ripe, from August to No¬ 
vember. One man can take care of several hun¬ 
dred cattle, and the winter is a season of leisure. 
Where there is good judgment in buying and 
selling, the profits of this kind of farming are 
very handsome, and the farm is all the while 
improving in fertility. Everything it produces 
is returned to it again. 
Of course all farmers can not follow grazing, 
but the low price of grains and the high price 
of meats indicate that the raising of meats pays 
better than the raising of grain. In the new 
settlements of the West they must still raise 
grain, for there is little capital there, and the 
raising of grain is the easiest way of making 
money. But in the more thickly settled portions 
of the country, where the farmer has a good 
home market for beef and mutton, veal and 
lamb, and labor is high, he should enlarge his 
pastures and increase his stock. It is surprising 
to see the change effected in a few years upon 
an old pasture by heavy grazing. We came 
into possession of an old rented farm three 
years since, that carried but four cows, a pair of 
horses, and a small flock of sheep. There was a 
hundred acres or more, devoted to pasture, badly 
moss-grown, weedy, and bushy, from want of 
grazing. About thirty head of cattle and twen¬ 
ty-five sheep with their lambs have been kept, in 
good condition in this old pasture the past sea¬ 
son, although twenty acres of it were devoted 
to rye. The feed has been more than quad¬ 
rupled in quantity, and greatly improved in 
quality. White clover has come in abundantly, 
as have fine grasses, and the weeds and brush 
are disappearing under the noses of the sheep. 
If the bushes are large, it is necessary to plow, 
or to cut them frequently to get rid of them. 
But almost any neglected pasture, free of brush, 
may be restored by grazing. Top-dressing with 
concentrated fertilizers will hasten the process 
of amelioration. In some districts plaster will 
be sufficient, but the action of plaster is so un¬ 
equal that an experiment only can tell it it 
is advisable to use it. In all, bone-dust and 
ashes will be good and paying investments. 
