WHEAT GROWING IN TEXAS, ETC. 
129 
WHEAT GROWING IN TEXAS. 
The Red-River country in this state, embracing 
an extent of about 100 miles in width and about 
500 in length, has already proved, with the imper¬ 
fect experiments which have been made, to be bet¬ 
ter adapted to the production of wheat, than any 
other portion of the Union yet known. The pro¬ 
duct equals in quantity, exceeds in weight and 
quality, and precedes in time of harvest, by two 
most important months, all the wheat-producing 
country of the other states. The average per acre, 
where wheat has been sown, on a field from which 
corn has been gathered in the same season, the land 
plowed up, sowed with grain, and dragged in 
with brush, is twenty bushels, and thirty bushels 
has been sometimes obtained. What would be the 
product from a proper and careful cultivation, is as 
yet a matter of estimate only. 
In grinding the wheat into flour, the residuum is 
a light bran without middling, and the average 
weight per bushel is about seventy pounds. The 
harvest is in the month of May, which gives a 
monopoly of the entire southern market, at a sea¬ 
son of the year when the northern supply has be¬ 
come musty and sour, under the influences of a 
southern climate. What the monopoly of the 
market is, may be proximately estimated from the 
fact-that New Orleans alone consumes daily 750 
barrels • and if that quantity constitutes one tenth 
of the whole consumption, it gives 750 barrels 
daily, or 450,000 barrels in sixty days, which, at 
three dollars per barrel, gives a return of nearly 
one and a half millions of dollars, for the agricul¬ 
tural product of one hundred thousand acres of land, 
cultivated by about three thousand laborers. 
If the flour of the upper country finds a market 
in the lower, so will the sugar of the lower coun¬ 
try find a market in the upper. We have just dis¬ 
covered that Texas is adapted to the cultivation of 
sugar, at a time when it seems doubtful whether its 
product is not already so near equal to the demand, 
as to render it unprofitable. By increasing the 
population of the northern portion of the state, and 
providing facilities of communication, the planter 
may secure a fair price .—Houston Telegraph. 
Cost of Manuring an Acre of Corn. —The 
following estimate of manuring an acre of Indian 
corn is from a practical farmer, of Hicksville, near 
Long-Island Railroad, New York : — 
14 cubic yards, (20 loads,) of horse dung, 1.62 
56 bushels of unleached ashes, - - 7.00 
3,630 mossbunkers, (fish,) - 4.54 
$13.16 
The horse dung he applies in the hill, at the 
time of planting a handful of ashes is spread 
around the corn at the first hoeing; one fish is 
slightly covered with earth midway between the 
hills and lengthwise of the rows, in June or July. 
By this course of manuring, an acre will yield 
from 60 to 80 bushels of shelled corn, and will be 
in tolerable condition for a crop of rye, buckwheat, 
or oats, the next season, without any more manure. 
HOURS OF SLEEP. 
Nature requires five—custom gives seven ; 
Laziness takes nine—wickedness eleven. 
SHEEP SHEARS. 
Well-constructed wool shears are of great im¬ 
portance to a careful wool grower, not only in re¬ 
gard to a greater rapidity with which the shearer 
takes off the fleece, but especially to prevent cut¬ 
ting the sheep • which is injurious to the animal on 
account of the wounds which are kept inflamed 
and irritated by the flies and other insects during 
the best season, and besides there grows, generally, 
upon these injured parts a coarse kind of wool or 
hair, which depreciates the value of the fleece; and 
that of the animal as a breeder. While I was at 
Breslau, at the before-mentioned meeting of Ger¬ 
man agriculturists, there were exhibited a new kind 
of shears, which are now considered the best con¬ 
structed, and are getting to be generally used there. 
I made an accurate drawing, full size, of such a 
pair of shears, from which a skillful mechanic can 
easily manufacture them. 
Fig. 35. German Sheep Shears. 
The shears a and b, Fig 35, are shorter than the 
common wool shears, and facilitate the shearer in 
cutting clean from the fold without injury to the 
sheep. 
When a straight line is drawn through the spring 
e, and side piece a and b , the shears deflect from 
that line at an angle of about 10 degrees. This 
kind of shears are sold at Berlin, Prussia, Jaeger- 
strasse, No. 50, from $2.80 to $3.50 per dozen. 
[We have a similar article on sale, with double 
springs, imported from Germany, at 50 cents each.]' 
—C. L. Fleischmann. 
