144 
IMPROVED AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS, ETC. 
of disinfecting their manure, hut they seem to be 
perfectly aware, that if allowed free access to the 
air a great loss must result, owing to the gases 
which are given out and dissipated. Without wait¬ 
ing, then, for fermentation or putrefaction, this 
manure is at once applied to the growing crops. 
On the afternoons, or on cloudy days, the laborers 
are seen carrying water from the nearest pond or 
canal to the manure tank, for the purpose of 
diluting its contents. This being done, they fill 
their buckets, attaching one to each end of their 
bamboos in the usual way, and carry them off to 
their destination. When this is reached, each man 
takes a small wooden ladle having a long bamboo 
handle, and with this he scatters the liquor over the 
growing crop. A strong stimulant like this would 
probably in other circumstances have an inju- 
jious effect; but, by using it only when the crops 
are young and luxuriant, they assimilate its gases, 
and a most marked effect is produced upon 
their growth and productiveness. This kind of 
liquid manure is generally applied to wheat, barley, 
and all the cabbage tribe, and other garden vege¬ 
tables ; but not to rice, which is always flooded 
during its growth. 
This manure is sometimes used after putrefaction 
and fermentation have taken place, and even in 
this state js very efficient. In the gardens near 
Canton it is often dried and mixed with the soil 
taken from the bottom of the lotus ponds,, and 
used for growing plants in pots, or for enriching 
any particular tree which may be a favorite in the 
garden. 
Although the land is sometimes allowed to lie 
idle for some months, yet there is no regular 
system of fallowing, nor is the rotation of crops 
much known or practised. Indeed, as regards 
the low lands, the soil being a kind of stiff, strong 
clay, capable of yielding many crops of rice in 
succession, without being in any way burthened 
or impoverished, no such mode of cultivation is 
necessary. 
IMPROVED AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. 
Having occasion to visit the capacious establish¬ 
ment of Messrs. A. B. Allen & Co., 191 Water 
street, we could not hut be struck with the variety 
and excellence of the implements for every possible 
purpose on a farm—from the cotton gin down to the 
apple parer—from the gigantic horse rake to the hoe 
no bigger than a dollar. Think of a hundred varieties 
of plows! Shade of Triptolemas! all that is lacking 
is the original plow to place side by side with these 
shapely, painted, and varnished clod compellers, in 
which real grace and beauty are made tributary to 
usefulness. Then there are the offspring of the 
plow—children, grand children, and great grand 
children ; the cunning “ cultivator,” and slicers and 
scrapers of every degree, all potent to destroy the 
upstart family of weeds, though proverbially re¬ 
luctant—like other parvenus —to “ stay put.” 
There are pitchforks, so tempered that a loaded 
wagon may roll over their tines without injury, 
and twanging under a slight blow like the pitch- 
pipe with which the country chorister sets “ Wells,” 
or“ Hebron.” There is the sausage cutter, with 
which the good wife, turning a crank while she 
rocks the cradle, can mince more pork in an hour 
than could be done in a day by the old method } 
and the hand mill, which grinds hommony for break¬ 
fast while the fire is making. But a descriptive 
catalogue of all the ingenious and useful and really 
beautiful things that attracted our attention in the 
course of a hurried stroll through the various floors 
of this establishment, is quite out of question. We 
mention it for the sake of the numerous visitors 
from the country who are in town at this season, 
and who will of course wish to ascertain what 
science has been doing for the farmer since their 
last visit to this mart of all inventions. If our 
city readers should fancy that our theme lacks dig¬ 
nity, we have only to recall to their recollection 
BryanPs beautiful 
AGRICULTURAL OBEV 
Far back in the ages 
The piow with wreaths was crown'd ; 
The hand of kings and sages 
Entwin’d the chaplet round; 
Till men of spoil 
Disdain’d the toil 
By w hich the world was nourish’d, 
And blood and pillage were (he soil 
In which their laurels flourished. 
Now the world her fault repairs. 
The guilt that stains her story ; 
And weeps her crimes amid the cares 
That formed her earliest glory 
The proud throne shall crumble, 
The diadem shall wane, 
The tribes of earth shall humble 
The pride ofthose who reign ; 
And war shall lay 
His pomp away; 
The fame that heroes cherish. 
The glory earned in deadly fray. 
Shall fade, decay, and perish. 
Honor waits o T er all the earth, 
Through endless generations. 
The art that calls the harvest forth, 
And feeds the expectant nations. 
Tbe approach of spring, with all its rich promise 
—the Mexican war, with “ the guilt that stains its 
story,” and the laurels that make us almost forget 
the guilt—and the dreadful accounts of famine in 
foreign lands—give a peculiar significance and per-* 
tinency to this fine poem at the present moment. 
May it be the glorious privilege of our farmers to 
feed the expectant nations !”—Christian Inquirer. 
The above was written nearly a year since, and 
we presume is from the pen of Mrs. C. M. Kirk¬ 
land, the accomplished authoress of “A New 
Home,” under the assumed name of “ Mrs. 
Clavers,” a work without exception, the drollest, 
the raciest, and most original that ever flowed from 
the pen of an American lady. It also abounds with 
a high moral. 
A Feathered Chimney Sweep.— An old-fash¬ 
ioned mode of sweeping chimneys was to tie to¬ 
gether the legs of a goose, pull her up and down the 
flue by a string, and cause her to dislodge the soot 
by the flapping of her wings. This may seem 
cruel to the humane but, which is the most barba¬ 
rous, tbe sending of a goose down a chimney or a 
child up it % 
Guano for Grass Lands. —Grass lands may be 
greatly improved by sowing broadcast, about 300 
pounds of Peruvian guano per acre, in wet weather 
about the first of May. 
