170 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Mat, 
feit the sum of Jive dollars, while for every time he pre¬ 
dicts correctly, you shall forfeit the sum of (me dollar. If 
at the end of three months the balance of forfeitures is 
against me, you shall pocket it. If the balance of forfeits 
is in my favor, it shall he used to advertise the result in 
the American Agriculturist. In both cases, and whatever 
the result, you are to publish this challenge, and the re¬ 
sults arrived at, in the Tribune. You cannot object to the 
/aimess of this proposition, for, as you publicly state that 
the Barometer fails fifty-nine times out of sixty, and you 
gain live dollars for each failure, and I but one dollar for 
each success, if your statement is true, you will get $295 
for every time I get $1. I make this oflfcr in good faith, 
and will act up to it, and, if you require it, will deposit 
$500 in advance as security. I do not make the proposi¬ 
tion as a betting or gambling scheme at all, but to call out 
evidence and thorough investigation, that we may have 
more tangible and certain proof than random individual 
statements, if the facts are as you have stated. Your 
connection with the Tribune gives wide circulation to 
your statements, and it is important to the public that 
they do not lead to error. Yours, very truly, 
CHABLES WILDER. 
Peterboro’, N. H., April 2d, 1867. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 41. 
A few days ago I got a letter from John 
Johnston. After he had sealed the envelope, 
he wrote on the outside ; “ Write the name of 
your farm plain; I cannot make it out.” 
I call it “ Moreton Farm.” One has to have 
a name of some kind, you know. Rose Hill, 
Sunnyside, and similar names would be too sen¬ 
timental. “ Edgewood ” I like, but Ike Marvel 
has appropriated that. Henry A^^ard Beecher’s 
Farm in Lennox, before he bought it, was called 
“ Mount Desolation.” But when I saw it, a 
dozen years ago, it was a lovely spot. If I 
could have got those glorious old elms by adopt¬ 
ing the name, I would have done so. But there 
was no hope of that, and so I finally adopted a 
name which has no meaning in itself, but which, 
to me, revives the pleasantest recollections of 
my early days. Moreton was the place were 
my forefathers lived and died. The old thatch¬ 
ed home is still there, but the family is gone. 
Not one remains, and the farm is in other hands. 
My uncle John, the last occupier, was a good 
specimen of an English farmer. His father 
died when he was sixteen years old, and he and 
my father carried on the farm jointly for a dozen 
years or so. The farm contained 260 acres, 
half of it high rolling land, and the other half 
low and wet. The latter produced little but 
rushes and coarse grass. My uncle cut a deep 
ditch through this land, and underdrained into 
it. The effect was magical. It produced enor¬ 
mous crops, and for eight or ten years previous 
to the close of the war in 1815, the price of 
farm produce ruled fearfully high. He has sold 
wheat at |5 a bushel. Of course he made 
money. But I have heard him say that he did 
even better later in life, although prices were 
much lower. This was because his land became 
richer and richer, and he grew heavier crops. 
I hope such will be the case in this country. 
On this two hundred and sixty-eight-acre 
farm he raised 40 acres of wheat, 40 acres of 
barlej^, 40 acres of turnips, 5 acres of vetches, and 
sometimes more, cut green for the horses in 
summer, and six or eight acres of potatoes for 
fattening pigs. I think his wheat, in later years 
would average, one year with another, 30 bush¬ 
els per acre, and the barley 40 bushels. In 
addition to this he kept, on an average, 44 milch 
cows. He raised a dozen of his best calves 
every year; had a dozen two year olds, and 
fatted for the butcher every winter a dozen 
cows;—their place in the dairy being supplied 
by the dozen three year old heifers he had raised. 
He made cheese, and it was of excellent quality, 
although the night’s milk was skimmed in the 
morning before it was put into the vat with the 
new morning’s milk. And in this way he got 
about 100 lbs. of butter a week, in addition to 
the cheese. He kept nine horses, 150 large - 
Southdown and Leicester sheep, and many pigs. 
My land is naturally richer than the old Farm. 
Why cannot I make it equally productive? 
In the dairy districts of this State, the farms 
are kept too exclusively to grass; and in the 
wheat region, too exclusively to grain. If we 
could combine the two should we not obtain 
better results ? My uncle was a wheat grower, 
and his wife a Cheshire dairyman’s daughter. 
In Cheshire the land is devoted pretty ex¬ 
clusively to the dairy. But at Moreton they 
combined the two systems, and I believe they 
made nearly as much cheese, butter, mutton, 
wool, and pork, as if the whole farm had been 
devoted solely to these; and on the other hand 
they obtained as much wheat and barley as if 
the farm had been devoted exclusively to grain. 
Now I do not see why my farm, and much of 
the land in Western New York, will not produce 
as good cheese as the land at Moreton, and 
certainly as good meat. I asked Mr. Willard 
to visit Moreton and examine the matter. I do 
not know whether he did so or not. Sanford 
Howard did so, and I wish he would give his 
views on this subject. At Ingersoll, C. W., there 
is a large and flourishing cheese factory, and if 
I mistake not, it is as much a wheat growing 
section as Western Kew York. We want ma¬ 
nure on our wheat farms, and wool grbwing is 
not very profitable, and cattle can be fatted 
cheaper at the west than here, and so with pork. 
But if we could make cheese, the problem 
would be solved. We could feed high, make 
rich manure, and raise good wheat. 
Donald G. Mitchel, in his Wet Days at Edge- 
wood., a book I am never weary of reading, 
quotes a maxim from Columella, which he says 
is broad enough to cover all possible con¬ 
ditions : “ Whoever would devote himself to 
the pursuit of agriculture, should understand 
that he must summon to his aid—prudence in 
business, a faculty of spending, and a determi¬ 
nation to work.” 
My uncle had all these. He had prudence, 
but it did not degenerate into parsimony. He 
fed his land and his stock with a liberal hand. 
He was not afraid to lay out money in improve¬ 
ments. He could look ahead and was willing 
to wait. He had confidence in good farming. 
As an instance of his “ faculty of spending.” 
When guano was first introduced, he heard on 
good authority of its astonishing effect, and 
ordered five tons to give it a trial. It proved to 
be all that could be desired and the next year 
he ordered ten tons. 
I once tried to persuade oue of our Monroe 
County potato growers to use guano, and finally 
succeeded. “When you send for yours, you 
may order fifty pounds for me. I have not as 
much faith in these things as you have, but am 
willing to try it.” 
I want to raise a good crop of corn this year. 
The field has been in grass for some years. I am 
plowing under some 25 loads of manure per 
acre, and have a heap of last year’s manure in 
the field, thoroughly rotted, that I intended to 
spread on the surface after plowing and harrow 
it in thoroughly before planting. “Would it 
not be better to put it in the hill ?” Possibly it 
might, but the roots extend farther than we 
imagine, and will find it. Besides, I do not plant 
in hills. I shall drill in the corn. The Deacon 
does not believe in drilling. He thinks corn 
does far better in hills. But John Johnston 
writes me that he has drilled in all his corn 
since 1846, and few men have better crops. 
I wrote Mr. Johnston that my underdrains 
were running freely, while the surface was frozen 
as solid as a rock, and asked him how the water 
got into the drains. He replies: “Don’t you 
know that when we have much snow it draws 
the frost out of the ground, and the tile drains 
discharge all the water there is in the land ? 
Some of mine have discharged water all winter. 
Where the snow blows off, they don’t. You 
will learn much if you keep farming and drain¬ 
ing ! Some of my wheat made a good growth 
under the snow this winter. I suppose thou¬ 
sands of farmers never notice this fact.” The 
above appears to be a partial explanation, but 
does not, it seems to me, cover all the facts. 
I have just received the April Agriculturist. 
As Mr. Johnston says, I do not write very “plain” 
and the printers doubtless are often troubled to 
make out my meaning. They sometimes guess 
at it, and do not always hit it. Speaking of 
underdrains filling up with sediment, they make 
me say : “ The chief danger is from the surface 
water washing away the soil, more or less, and 
running in large quantities into the drain.” 
What I intended to say was, that where the 
drains run through tlie vallej^s of rolling land, 
the water in the spring runs along the surface 
of the frozen land and accumulates in the val¬ 
leys over the drains. The soil over the drain 
is not frozen as hard as the rest of the land, and 
in several instances on my farm, the water soaks 
through this soft soil and makes a hole down to 
the drain, small, probably, at first, but soon 
wearing larger. These holes are usually about 
the size of a rat-hole, running, perpendicularly 
down to the tiles. But where there are larger 
tiles the holes are sometimes larger. What I 
was afraid of was that this waten, being more 
or less muddy, might, in a drain that has little 
fail, deposit silt, and choke it up. But I have 
recently been examining the matter, and find 
there is less danger from this source than I ex¬ 
pected. The water being two or three feet 
above the drain, must be forced through the 
tiles with considerable rapidity, and carry the 
sediment with it. 
While my hand is in, I may say that the argu¬ 
ment in favor of feeding clover hay and oilcake 
in the March No. is rendered obscure by the 
omission of a line. It should have been stated 
that “ the manure from a ton of oilcake is worth 
$19.72.” Several gentlemen have written me 
about my remarks on this subject. If they will 
supply this line, and take a pencil and go over 
the calculation, they Avill come to the same con¬ 
clusion that I did—namely, that, after deducting 
the expense of carting and spreading the ma¬ 
nure, the net value of a load of clover hay and 
oilcake dung, with part straw for litter, is seven 
times as great as the manure obtained from feed¬ 
ing straw alone. And if this is true, are we 
not making a mistake in allowing American 
oilcake to be shipped to England ? 
Cotton-seed cake, which I understand is being 
made extensively, is more valuable for manure 
even than Linseed oilcake. It contains 62 per 
cent, of nitrogen, 7 per cent, of phosphate of 
lime, and over 3 per cent, of potash, and these 
figures show that the manure obtained for a ton 
of it is worth $27.86. This is on the supposition 
that the husks are removed from the cotton be¬ 
fore the oil is expressed. If this is not the case, 
the cake will be of far less value for manure, and 
