IMT.] 
the hollew., ,„ul->vell we heve now quite a 
respec table “lawn ’’ f„r a farm home. I advise 
any city man, who turns farmer, to attend to 
such things the tii-st year-for if put off for 
more time, they will never be done at all! 
I received a letter to-day from a subscriber to 
the AgricuUurUt in Illinois. “I would like” 
he says, “ to get an apparatus for cooking food 
for a few’ hogs and neat cattle; and I notice that 
in your "W alks and Talks 3-011 mention that 3-011 
have one; and that D. R. Prindlc, in his circu¬ 
lar, publishes testimonials from you. Do you 
use his steamer, and is it a convenient appara¬ 
tus, simple enough to be used w-ithout danger 
and w-ilhout dirticult 3 -. 'Would his No. 2 , have 
capacity to cook enough meal for, say 30 hoc^s 
and 10 steers? Or is there a better than his?” 
I have used Prindle’s steamer for two or three 
pars. There is no ditllculty or danger in using 
it. And it is a very simple and convenient ap¬ 
paratus. Still it requires some bruins to man- 
age it—and farm hands, you know, are rather de¬ 
ficient in that article. I have never had a man 
yet who did not think he could cook better and 
faster with an old-fashioned kettle. I have 
steamed a barrel of potatoes with it perfectly in 
*|« hour; but I have know-ii a man to keep the 
steamer going all da 3 ’ on one barrel, and not 
have the potatoes cooked at night! A boy 
generall 3 , after a few-weeks training, manages 
it better than a man, because less prejudiced. 
But it must be confe.ssed tlie steamer has 
faults. You can not tell w-hen the w-ater is get¬ 
ting low; and w-e have several times had it get 
dr 3 ’, w-ith a large fire underneath; and in one 
case we poured w-ater in when it had been dry 
for sometime, and was nearly red hot. We 
came near having an e.vplosion—at least near 
enough to frighten the person pouring in the 
w-ater, though I presume there w-as no real dan¬ 
ger, as the steam w-as not confined. Still it blew 
the w-ater all over the room, and cracked the bot¬ 
tom of tlie itcamer, and it cost me $22 to get it 
repaired. The steam is conveyed from the top 
of the cauldron in a vulcanized rubber tube, to an 
iron pipe, w-hich goes through the meal or pota¬ 
toes, to the bottom of the barrel. This tube 
sometimes gets stopped up w-ith the meal, part- 
13 ’ or entircl 3 ’. We obviate it by t 3 ’ing a piece 
of cloth round the pipe. You and I w-ould have 
no trouble in correcting it, but those “hands !” 
There w-ould be a great saving of heat if the 
cauldron was set in an arch. It is now sheathed 
with iron, and the heat radiates from it and is 
lost. On tiie w-hole, I do not think it w’ould 
pay to cook food for neat cattle. I have tried 
it for milch cows and found it too much trouble. 
It w-ill pay better to cook food for hogs than 
for any other animal. Their stomachs are 
smaller, and they require more concentrated 
food. In steaming meal, I find that it is neces¬ 
sary to put in cousiderable water, and to be care¬ 
ful to have it w-cll mi.ved. If any of tlie meal 
is dry, it will remain dr 3 ', no matter how long 
3 ’ou steam it. The advantage of the steamer 
over a common cauldron is, tliat there is no 
danger of burning the meal. There is no abso¬ 
lute saving of heat; it is simply more conveniei>t, 
and when the steam is up, 3 ’ou can cook 
another barrel as soon as the first is done. 
AaRICULTriRTWT^- 
ne er been done since. The men do not like it. 
Ihey prefer to take the grain to the mill and 
w ait for It to be ground. And I find that if I 
et two of them at grinding, one to drive and 
one .0 altcm, the mill, iwcn.y.flve or 
bushels IS all that they will grind in a day^ 
1 he men are not lazy either. I iiave as good 
men as can be found—married men who live 
m houses on the farm, and possessing more than 
average intelligence. It is a lack of energy and 
self-confidence. They think a thing “can’t be 
done,” and they are generally right, so far as 
Uiey are concerned. But if you can attend to 
It yourself, all the lime, get a good mill, and it 
will pay. I do not know’, how’ever, w-liere tliere 
IS a really good one. I wish the good people at 
the Agriculturist Office would look up the best 
one there is made, and offer it as a premium. 
bullion decreased.-What we want for our 
g ing crops 13 not a moist surface, half an 
whL underneath, 
le loots lamifyand imbibe their food. 
Another gentleman w-rites me in regard to a 
mill for grinding grain. The one I have, on 
the whole, is not entirely satisfactor 3 ’. It does 
not grind fast enough. Once, wdicii I attended 
to it myself, with four horses, I ground tw-enty- 
eight bushels of peas in three hours and ten 
minutes. This would do very w-cll. But it has 
When I was pulling some w’eeds out of the 
potatoes last summer, the Deacon stood near 
and shaking his head, said: “There is too 
much top.” But one thing struck me: Notwith¬ 
standing that it had rained almost constantly for 
several Avecks, I found in pulling lip these large 
W’eeds that the soil was realbj quite dry. The po¬ 
tato tops completely covered the ground, and if 
there Avas any truth in the idea that growing 
crops shade the ground and keep it moist, this 
land Avould have been wet; yet the soil pulled up 
on the roots of the w’eeds was dry as dust. A 
correspondent of the Country Gentleman men¬ 
tions a fact that appears to prove that weeds 
Avhich shade the ground keep it moist. He says: 
“To-day I w-as hoeing in my garden, Avhere 
the Aveeds were one inch high, and scarce; there 
the ground was dry half an inch. One place, 
not tAvo feet distant, had many Aveeds about four 
inches high, completely shading the ground. 
There, not a particle of dry earth is to be found.” 
The fiict may Avell be as here stated. But 
what does it prove? It shows, perhaps, that 
Aveeds w’hich shade the ground, check evapora¬ 
tion of moisture from the surface, and that for 
half an inch deep such soil is not as dry as that 
w-hich is e.xposed to the sun and air. But does 
it show that the weeds do not take ’a^tfrom the 
soil beneath, a large quantity of Avater and evap¬ 
orate it through their leaves ? Had the soil 
w-here the w-eeds grew been e.xamined three, 
four, or six inches deep, it would probably have 
been found drier than that Avhich was bare. 
One thing is certain: plants, during all their 
groAvth, take up by their roots and evaporate 
through their leaves an enormous quantity of 
Avater. Many experiments have been made 
w-hich demonstrate this fact. Those of Lawes 
arc the most thorough and extensive. He ascer¬ 
tained with the greatest accurac 3 ’, the amount 
of water evaporated by wheat, barley, beans, 
peas and clover. A Wheat plant giving 
in grain and straw only one pound of dry sub¬ 
stance, evaporated during its groAvth, of 173 da 3 -s, 
247.4 lbs. of water; Barley, 257.8 lbs.; Beans, 
208.8 lbs.; Peas, 259.1 lbs.; Clover (during 101 
days), 209.1 lbs. In other words, an acre of 
w’heat of 30 bushels and 1800 lbs. of straw, 
would evaporate during the spring and summer, 
355i tons of water, or orev five hundred gallons 
a day. A crop of clover of 2 tons per acre evap¬ 
orates in 101 da 3 ’s, 430 tons of water, or over 
1,000 gallons a day! And yet a heavy crop 
of clover would shade the ground completely. 
This AA’ater actually passed the plants. 
Of course the exhalation was greater as the 
plants increased in growth. Thus a wheat 
plant in March exhaled 14.1 grains of water a 
day; in April, 41 grains; in May 162 grains ; 
in June 1,177 grains; in July 1,535 grains a day. 
After this, as the plant begaii to mature, the ex- 
I wish something could be done to break up 
hmi« f ^ v ^«^^®ient, but it spoils the 
imnT It is hard work to 
Thev ^^°nder. 
^ ploAvman along 
eiy ay by the bit, and w’hen he wants them 
o back or turn round, he braces himself against 
le ground and pulls hard enough to spoil any 
decently broken horse in a week. I once saw a 
boy take the First Prize at one of the plowino- 
matches of the Ro 3 ’al Agricultural Society, who 
drove his team without lines at all. Our horses 
are a little too lively for that, but still they mio-ht 
easily be trained to haw and gee, to back^to 
turn round, and to stop, without using the lines 
scarcely at all. 
You “ do not see how holding the lines round 
3 ’our back in plowing and cultivating spoils the 
horse^for ordinary driving in a wagon and car¬ 
nage.” Simply because the poor horse has to 
pull hard on the bit all the time, and is obliged 
to set his neck so stiff that it soon loses all 
elasticit 3 ’. And a stiff-necked horse is always 
difficult and unpleasant to drive. My men say 
they haA’e to put the lines round their back to 
keep the horses from going so fast, and to guard 
against breaking the plow in case you sti'ike a 
stone. In the spring I mean to get some cord 
lines just long enough to put on the handles of 
the plow, putting a short stick betAveeu the 
hoises fastened to the inside of the bits, and 
then say, “if the horses go too fast at first, they 
will soon get tired of it, and if you strike a 
stone and break a plow, you can go to the barn 
and get another one.” The light wooden 
stretches between the horses’ heads keeps them 
from crowding each other, or from getting 
too far apart, and you can plow much straighter. 
And then the saving of the leather lines is quite 
an object these times. 
Eaisin^ Clover Seed. 
This is one of the most profitable crops raised 
by northern farmers. It is not generally large 
in quantity, but so far as it goes, it yields large 
returns for the labor and money expended on 
it. From three to five bushels per acre may 
generally be expected, and this, selling at from 
$8 to $12 a bushel, is a good return for the la¬ 
bor. The culture of clover is simple and easy. 
The ground should be well ifiowed and har¬ 
rowed fine, the manuring moderate. Such lands 
as bring good crops of wheat, oats, and barley, 
will produce good crops of clover. The seed 
should be sown early, the earlier the better. 
As clover does not last usually more than one 
year for a full crop, it is generally best to seed 
down the land to timothy at the same time; the 
latter to form the main crop of the second 3 ’ear. 
‘When the clover has got well established, it is 
the practice of many to turn in their cattle and 
sheep upon it. This furnishes excellent feed, 
and the cropping of it does no harm to the 
clover, but rather helps it. The stock are kept 
here until the middle of June, when they are 
taken out, and the crop allowed to take a new 
start. If kept on longer, the clover would not 
have time to mature seed before frost. By being 
fed down pretty closely ovey thq whole field, 
the plants now start uniformly, and all blossom 
and ripen their seeds nearly at once, Avhich is a 
very ifopp,i’|iiut matter. Attention to this point 
