1873-1 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
the fiber, a good dry upland is most suitable. 
When seed is grown the quality of the fiber is 
sacrificed, for if seed is desired a branching 
open stalk must be produced, and to secure such 
a stand thin seeding must be adopted, not more 
than half a bushel of seed per acre. The soil 
should be made very fine by repeated harrow- 
mgs, the seed sown evenly broadcast, and cov¬ 
ered slightly with a bush harrow. Early sow¬ 
ing is desirable, but a crop may be grown from 
seed sown early in May. Flax is an excellent 
shade crop, and leaves the ground mellow and 
free from weeds, and in good order for a follow¬ 
ing crop of wheat on ground rich enough for it. 
As soon as the seed-bolls turn brown the crop 
should be cut Either the cradle or the reaper 
may he used, and the crop raked into gavels as 
in harvesting buckwheat. It is unnecessary to 
bind it unless it is saved for the fiber. When 
dry enough, it may be thrashed out by the flail 
or the machine. Most of the fan-mills have 
sieves for cleaning flax, and any manufacturer 
of these mills can supply them. Ten to twenty 
bushels of seed is an ordinary crop, and the 
straw as it comes from the thrashing-machine 
makes excellent paper-stock. If there is any 
demand for the fiber within practicable distance 
it will pay very well to bind the straw in bun¬ 
dles, thrash out the seed, and expose the straw 
to the rotting process by which a ton of valu¬ 
able fiber may often be procured from each acre 
of ground. The cake left as the residue after 
pressing out the oil is one of the most valuable 
articles of feed; and if used on the farm, and 
the manure returned to the soil, a crop of flax 
may safely be grown once in five years in place 
of a crop of corn, which requires more labor, 
and brings in much less money to show for it. 
-■» i — aw » — 
Jersey Cattle for Beef.— It is frequently 
objected to the use of Jerseys and their grades, 
that although they are valuable for the dairy, a 
common farmer can not afford to grow stock 
which will not be useful for the butcher when 
its dairy days are over. This implies that the 
Jerseys do not fatten well, an opinion for which 
there is not the slightest foundation. A good 
Jersey, so long as she is milking, turns her fat 
into the pail to that degree that she looks like a 
rack of bones; but when she ceases milking 
she does not lose her appetite, nor does she 
waste the fat-producing elements of her food. 
On the contrary, she stores them away in a 
rich, highly-colored, and well-flavored deposit, 
that makes much better beef than can be ob¬ 
tained from any other cow of her age and size. 
High-Feeding Thorough-bred Animals. 
Fisher Hobbs, the well-known breeder of 
Essex pigs, once remarked to a gentleman who 
had bought one of his sows: “ Don’t overfeed ; 
make her work hard for her living.” Right or 
wrong, many experienced breeders think it very 
injurious to overfeed their breeding animals. 
We think there can be no doubt on this point. 
But then it is still an open question, What is 
overfeeding ? 
At the National Convention of Shorthorn 
Breedersat Indianoplis, this subject was in¬ 
troduced and called out a great diversity of opin¬ 
ion. Mr. Sodowsky, of Illinois, said : “ A year 
ago I bought a cow, one of the fattest animals I 
ever saw, and on February 16th she produced 
me as fine a calf as I ever saw produced.” 
Mr. Duncan, of Illinois, was convinced that 
cattle arc as liable to fail to breed in low order 
as in high order. 
Mr. Dye, of Illinois, said it was a theory of 
his that high feeding had rendered our blooded 
stock less productive than our common cattle. 
T. C. Jones, of Ohio, said, “as a matter of 
fact, when animals are very fat they are not so 
liable to breed as when they are only in good 
condition. Mr. Booth [the well-known English 
breeder] had stated that he will never show 
again. His cattle are all running out, and he 
says that the infertility of his leading families 
must be attributed to high feeding for the shows.” 
Mr. Duncan, of Illinois, a breeder of great ex¬ 
perience, said: “I favor breeding from animals 
in the very highest condition that it is possible 
to keep them for that purpose, for the reason 
that the general law of nature that like produces 
like, comes in and operates in my favor. You 
may take the highest breed of animals and 
breed from it for generation after generation, 
but if they be poorly fed you will make scalla- 
wags of them; while if you keep them in the 
highest condition possible, you will increase the 
natural propensity to take on flesh, and thus 
nature assists you as breeders and farmers in the 
development of the qualities for which these 
animals are chiefly valuable.” 
This, so far as it goes, is very good reasoning. 
Mr. Duncan continued: “What was it that 
gave Mr. Booth his notoriety as a breeder in 
England? Mr. Booth and Mr. Bates were the 
rival breeders in England, and in consequence 
of their rivalry, they bred from their animals in 
high condition, and when Mr. Booth was asked 
by the American agents if he was not afraid to 
make his animals barren by keeping them in 
such high condition, he said, ‘Gentlemen, these 
are fat beasts by nature. It is as natural for 
them to breed in their condition as it is for the 
ordinary cattle of the country.’ My opinion is 
this,” continued Mr. Duncan, “that the breeding 
period of any animal can be shortened by their 
being kept in show condition for too long a 
time, and yeti belieye I saw quite a number of 
times, myself, Young Mary , sold by the Ohio 
Importing Co., and purchased by Capt. Cunning¬ 
ham, in the show rings, in high condition—still 
that cow produced her last calf in her twenty- 
first year. That is a fact. ... I do not believe 
it shortens the breeding period to keep them in 
good condition at one year old, or two years 
old, or anything like that, but still I would not 
go further; but I would keep them at those ages 
in as high condition as possible, in order to have 
them heavy producers.” 
This is the true doctrine, and one which we 
have repeatedly advocated in the American 
Agriculturist. Let all animals bred principally 
for meat, have all the food they can eat, digest,and 
assimilate while young. As long as they will 
grow, let them have all the nutriment they can 
convert into growth. It will not hurt them. 
But when they have attained their growth , then 
feed only enough to keep them in the highest 
health and vigor. Close confinement and high 
feeding with rich concentrated food are quite 
likely to prove injurious. Our own aim is to 
give animals that have got their growth as 
much exercise as possible, and abundance of 
food, but not of too nutritious a character. 
Mr. Stevenson, of Indiana, was not in favor 
of high feeding. He hoped the Convention 
would take such measures as to induce the peo¬ 
ple to adopt this breed of cattle (Shorthorns) 
everywhere. To induce them to do that, they 
must believe that they can live upon our prairies 
and upon our blue-grass fields—that they can 
live as other cattle live and not deteriorate. 
We think that the better plan is to ascertain 
the truth, and let people know it. It seems 
1 79 
somewhat .strange to us that any Western 
farmer living where corn is so abundant and 
cheap, should be afraid to keep a breed of ani¬ 
mals that require, when young, more or less 
corn in winter to keep them growing as rapidly 
as they are capable of growing. We have by 
careful breeding and feeding, given them this 
quality of rapid growth. This is what consti¬ 
tutes their great value—the capacity of appro¬ 
priating a large amount of nutriment and con¬ 
verting it into a large amount of choice mea-t. 
What is Said of Butter. —When a whole¬ 
sale dealer is questioned as to the proportion of 
really fine butter he receives in his consign¬ 
ments, he replies about five per cent. A larger 
proportion than this comes to market as grease. 
The grocer will tell you that of all his stock 
good butter is the most difficult to procure, and 
costs him most time and trouble to select. We 
know there is no good reason why this should 
be so. Here and there scattered widely apart 
throughout the country we know farmers who 
make excellent butter, which would be classed 
first quality in the market, and next door to 
those are neighbors who make trash unfit for 
food. On the counters of country stores may 
any day be seen rolls of butter most widely 
different in color, flavor, and texture. One 
farmer is careful and cleanly, his wife keeps her 
dairy sweet and her pails and pans perfectly 
pure; another keeps a foul stable, milks in an 
uncleanly fashion, has musty feed and foul 
water for his cows, while his wife is equally 
careless in her dairy. How can the butter in 
these two cases be other than widely different 
in quality and value? 
Pearl-Fishing in Vermont. 
BY MRS. R. E. ROBINSON. 
The pearl-producing, fresh-water clam, or 
muscle ( Unio), is found in some Western streams 
though few pearls have yet been discovered in 
them. It seems that in this country fresh-water 
pearls are found most abundantly in the Win¬ 
ooski River in Vermont, not far from its source, 
and in its small tributaries. Within a few years 
much attention has been given to hunting them, 
and vast quantities of the molluscs have been 
destroyed by the merciless pearl-hunters, yet 
they are still found in great numbers. 
The shell from which the sketch (fig. 1) was 
made, is five inches long; two wide; one and a 
half thick. It is covered with a lightish-brown 
skin, that upon drying and exposure to the air 
becomes much darker. The animal within the 
shell is a light pink or salmon color. The inte¬ 
rior of the shell is pearly and iridescent, with a 
brownish-yellow patch near the hinge. 
The clams were onee found in any part of the 
river, but they have been hunted so much they 
are now usually found in deep water alone. 
Pearls are more frequently found in clams that 
live on stony or gravelly bottoms, as a grain of 
sand or some small foreign substance that has 
entered the shell forms the nucleus around 
which the layers of pearl are made, taking an 
unknown number of years to form even a small 
pearl. Sometimes they are taken from river¬ 
beds of clay and mud. It is said clams must be 
seven years old before they begin to form a 
pearl. 
The clams move slowly from place to place, 
crawling edgewise, leaving a groove-like track. 
The small end of the clam sticks in the bottom 
of the stream with the large end out and open, 
