36 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ Janutry 14, 1883, 
reason for this is not far to seek. Old implements are as 
dear to the farmer as old customs, but it is undoubtedly the 
high prices of new implements and machinery that militate 
against anything like a brisk sale. When will middlemen 
come to see that it is as much to the advantage of the seller 
as the buyer to keep down prices ? The large profits made 
upon penny postage, cheap telegrams, railway travelling, and 
cheap literature, all point to the general advantage of the 
nimble ninepence over the slow shilling. The simile may 
appear somewhat far-fetched, but it is nevertheless true and 
forcible enough. Close inquiry into cost of production, and 
the price paid by the farmer after the different profits have 
been added to it, show plainly how heavy is the tax he is 
made to pay to the middlemen. There is a case in point. 
A few months ago we required a new farm cart for one 
of our farms, and we wrote for prices to an imple¬ 
ment maker at a town only a few miles distant from 
the farm. By return of post the keen tradesman sent 
us a bulky packet of his illustrated circulars, an illus¬ 
trated catalogue—the time of trains arriving and leaving 
the town, an offer to meet us at the railway station with a 
conveyance, and a somewhat premature expression of his 
gratification at having secured our custom. Now, the price 
list showed us that the sort of cart we required would cost 
from £17 to £29, so we went to the village wheelwright, 
whose offer to make a strong useful farm cart for £11 was 
at once accepted, and the cart made for that moderate sum 
is one of the best we have. Plain, strong, yet not too heavy, 
without any pretentious and useless embellishments, it com¬ 
pares favourably with any of the costly patent carts for which 
we have to pay so dear. Depend upon it that with low prices 
and good workmanship there would be a much larger sale, 
not only of carts, but of ail other useful farming imple¬ 
ments. 
Simplicity and efficiency are generally found in pleasing 
combination in the best implements and machinery. Elabo¬ 
rate combinations have almost invariably to make way for 
simple forms. That triumph of ingenuity and skill, 
Hornsby’s sheaf-binding reaper, gains in utility with greater 
simplicity. About half the parts of the knotter have been 
discarded. Steel has largely taken the place of iron, afford¬ 
ing lightness with strength, and several other improvements 
have been made. Very pleasant and instructive is the sight 
of one of these wonderful machines at work. A degree of 
speed, neatness, and finish is attained altogether superior to 
anything we have met with in the harvest field. Wise 
indeed in their generation were the farmers who secured 
“ a Hornsby ” for last harvest. We were favoured with 
glorious weather during the earlier weeks of harvest, and 
with the aid of self binding reapers the work was got through 
with in half the usual time. Very little Barley was washed 
or discoloured, all being safely housed before the long spell 
of wet weather set in, and which spoilt so much Barley. 
The result is significant. Barley saved before the rain has 
commanded 40s. a quarter, while Barley discoloured by rain 
has been sold for half that sum. Surely the lesson is suffi¬ 
ciently plain to be grasped by every farmer. We attend a 
corn market where there has for the last two months been an 
average weekly sale of 5000 quarters of Barley, and while 
the range of prices has been considerable, yet every sample 
has undoubtedly been treated on its merits, some ranging a 
little higher or lower perhaps, according to the keenness of 
buyer and seller. Careful threshing and thorough dressing 
are also highly important factors in the production of a good 
sample of corn. There is much difference in the work of 
threshing machines as well as of corn-dressers, and we ought 
not to rest satisfied with anything short of the best work. 
Messrs. Rainforth’s fiat adjustable corn screen is one of 
the best we have seen, and the Judges of implements at the 
Preston meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society marked 
their sense of its high merit by the award of a silver medal. 
Thorough separation of head and tail corn and of the seeds 
of weeds is what we require, and this is the test to apply to , 
a corn-dresser, which ought always to be purchased subject 
to such a trial. 
We were glad to see elevators brought into more general 
use last season, both for stacking hay and corn. Consider¬ 
able economy of labour is effected by means of an elevator, 
which does the heavy work of pitching on to a stack expedi¬ 
tiously and well, two or three men less being required. Brisk 
prompt action is all-important during harvest, and whatever 
contributes to it is highly valuable. Thoughtful discussion 
of such matters now should enable us to arrange our plans 
for the coming season of activity both wisely and well. 
WORK ON THE HOME FARM. 
Much good work is being done in cutting down timber in hedgerows, 
enclosing arable land, in thinning timber in woods, in park clumps and 
belts, and in tree planting. This part of the home farmer s duties is 
worthy of especial attention, and a man must have special training for it. 
The planting and arrangement of trees for effect as well as for profit may 
be said to fall within the province of the landscape gardener, but those 
who have the management of landed estates find their services more 
highly valued and more profitable to themselves if they are really 
skilful in the management and arrangement of trees. Although 
owners of such property may not have practical knowledge, 
yet they generally possess refined taste, which enables them to 
recognise and appreciate skilful work when they see it.. Fond¬ 
ness for trees ought never to be allowed to interfere with judicious 
thinning. By all means plant thickly at first, but do take care to thin 
plantations before growth becomes so much crowded as to affect the 
health or symmetrical growth of the permanent trees. Only a day or 
two previous to writing this note we were asked to inspect some neglected 
belts and clumps in a park, and we found that in some of them the trees 
had suffered so much from overcrowding that fine timber or ornamental 
growth was now an impossibility. Every tree in the interior was eo 
drawn up and attenuated as to be quite spoilt. Some of. the outer ones 
were more vigorous, but the branches’ growth was one-sided and totally 
deficient of symmetry, and our advice was either to leave the clumps 
alone or to destroy and replant them. Cur own home practice this season 
consists in opening out many pleasant views and fine trees in park 
scenery ; in giving an air of lightness and expanse to the surroundings of 
the mansion by so thinning and opening belts near the dressed grounds 
as to bring some fine trees in the park into sight from the garden, and 
some views of distant scenery. Young plantations have been thinned 
sufficiently to let in air and light to the permanent trees, of which there 
are many thousands, consisting of thriving young Cedars, Seotch and 
Austrian Pines, Larch, Wellingtonias, White Spruce, Piceas, and a taste- 
ful mixture of such deciduous trees as Limes, Sycamores, Maples, Oaks, 
Beeches, Poplars, Chestnuts, and Ash. The planting of underwood is 
also being done, Spanish Chestnut being planted in all sound well-drained 
soil, Ash in deep heavy soil, and Alder in low-lying damp places. Where 
theie is a demand for hoop wood for cement casks Hazel proves profitab.e 
underwood, and it grows freely in deep or shallow toil that is not water¬ 
logged. The most unprofitable underwood is Oak-scrub, and it is for this 
reason that we always insist upon having all Oak trees in woods grubbed 
up by the roots and not sawn c ff. 
OUR LETTER BOX. 
Drying Bacon (J. D .).—We should not venture to dry the bacon in a 
stokehole in which coke is burned on account of the sulphurous fumes 
emitted, and which would be absorbed by the flitches, and impart a ltavous 
that would be the reverse of palatable. 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Camden Square, London. 
Lat. 51° 32-40" N.; Long. 0° 8- 0" \V.; Altitude, lit feet. 
DATE. 
9 A.M. 
IN THE DAY. 
a 
03 
1886. 
January. 
Barome¬ 
ter at 32« 
and Sea 
Level 
Hygrome¬ 
ter. 
Direction 
of Wind. 
Temp, of 
Soil at 
1 foot. 
Shade Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature. 
Dry. 
Wet. 
Max. 
Min 
In 
sun. 
On 
grass 
Inches. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
In. 
3 
30.057 
40.2 
39.2 
S.W. 
40.8 
50.8 
33.4 
52.7 
26.5 
0.224 
4 
29.718 
49.4 
49.2 
w. 
41.4 
50.4 
39.8 
52.2 
32.8 
0.123- 
Tuesday. 
5 
29.672 
35.4 
32.9 
S.W. 
41.8 
45.4 
34.4 
63.7 
28.6 
0.518- 
Wednesday .. 
6 
29.534 
32.2 
32.2 
N.E. 
40 2 
39.4 
31.8 
51.3 
27.8 
0.289 
Thursday .... 
7 
30.104 
2G.7 
26.4 
N.E. 
38.7 
31.7 
24.4 
38.6 
15.3 
0.173- 
Friday. 
8 
29.561 
33.7 
33.2 
N. 
38.2 
35.2 
20.8 
58.2 
8.3 
— 
Saturday .... 
9 
29.779 
29.7 
28.9 
N. 
37.4 
36.3 
24 8 
67.6 
18.3 
— 
29.775 
35.3 
33.1 
39.8 
41.3 
29.9 
54 9 
22.4 
1.32 T 
REMARKS. 
3rd.—Fine day,but wet night. 
4th—Warm and wet all day, clear cool night. 
5th.—Fine, bright, and cold. 
6th.—Heavy snow, 44 inches deep at 9AM., 5$ inches at 10 A.M., 7 inches at UA.M., ant 
9 inches at noon ; tine bright afternoon. 
7th.—Fine, bright, and freezing hard. 
8tli.—Nearly an inch more snow in the night, followed by a thaw; fine bright day. 
9th.—Gloriously fine and bright; solo halo in morning. 
Temperature rather below the average, and a heavy fall of snow on Wednesday, Gtli 
—G. J. SYMONS. 
