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VOLUME VI. NO. 1-3.} 
“ Manual on Road Making.’’ There is much 
in it not necessary for the common highway, 
but still the true principles to govern in road 
making are plainly given, and ought to be¬ 
come the standard on the subject. A cheap 
popular manual is much needed, one that 
could be had by every district, and its princi¬ 
ples adopted by every town. 
There are two subjects to which we shall 
allude now, that are very important for good 
roads. One is good drainage, and the other 
a hard surface. Unless there are good water 
courses on each side of the road, so that the 
water can be carried rapidly away from the 
sides of the road in wet weather, no amount of 
labor will serve to keep the road in good re¬ 
pair. Upon them depends all the other im¬ 
provements. Another defect is in making the 
road bed. It is usually too narrow and steep. 
In grading, the bed ought to be either eight 
or twelve feet. The slope should be gentle 
from the centre—half an inch to the foot 
being enough. If the road be left too crow ning, 
the carriages all run in the centre, the wear is 
not evenly distributed, and it becomes rutty 
much sooner. But if it have a gentle inclina¬ 
tion, merely enough to carry off the water, 
then carriages will run more evenly over it, 
and the wear will be more uniform. 
There is another matter in this connection, 
which it -would be well to remember this 
spring. The overseer of highways, with con¬ 
sent of the commissioners, has the power to 
expend a certain amount of the tax list in 
making side-walks along the highways in their 
district; and any person riding or driving 
upon the side-walks thus made, is liable to be 
prosecuted and fined. There are a great many 
locations where such au improvement is much 
needed. 
crop seeming better than the last. We hope 
these remarks will set our economical people 
to work, for if this bone manure, compared 
with guano, is worth $30 per ton, it is well 
worth saving—and the thousands of scattered 
and wasted sources of fertility may better be 
employed than to go to Peru for an article far 
less profitable, considering cost and result. 
A QUARTO WEEKLY 
AGRICULTURAL, LITERARY, & FAMILY JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED BY D. D. T. MOOSE. 
ASSOCIATE EDITORS : 
J. R. BIXBY, T. C. PETERS, EDWARD WEBSTER. 
Special Contributors : 
T. E. Wktmorb, H. C. White, H. T. Brooks, L. Wkthereia. 
Ladies’ Port-Folio by Aznx. 
RECLAIMING MARSHES-ENGLISH FENS, 
The Rural New-Yorker is designed to be unique and 
beautiful in appearance, and unsurpassed in Value, Purity 
and Variety of Contents. Its conductors earnestly labor 
to make it a Reliable Guide on the important Practical 
Subjects connected with the business of those whose 
interests it advocates. It embraces more Agricultural, 
Horticultural, Scientific, Mechanical, Literary and News 
Matter, interspersed with many appropriate and beautiful 
Engravings, than any other paper published in this 
Country,—rendering it a complete Agricultural, Literart 
and Family Newspaper. 
For Terms, and other particulars, see last page. 
In old ar.d densely populated countries, 
where lands are dear and labor cheap, it is not 
surprising that strenuous effort is made to 
briDg every foot of waste land under cultiva¬ 
tion. Such a step, indeed, is necessary for self 
preservation, for otherwise the means of liveli¬ 
hood could not be procured ; but in a country 
like ours, where vast areas of pairie lands are 
waiting for the plow, where the cost of a farm 
of the public domain is merely nominal, and 
within the means of all, where the facilities 
for reaching market are rendered easy by two- 
thirds of the distance being water communica¬ 
tion, either artificial or natural, and the balance 
supplied by railroads over lines the easiest of 
grading and construction in the world, it is 
not to be expected that large sums will be ex¬ 
pended in reclaiming waste lands. Bogs and 
fens will remain eyesores upon lovely land¬ 
scapes, years after the surrounding up-lands 
are brought under successful and profitable 
cultivation. 
We need not be surprised to see a whole 
European country, like Holland, redeemed 
from the sea, the waves being fortified against 
by huge levees, and the surplus waters collect¬ 
ed in canals and ejected by means of steam 
power ; for all the German Sbites are densely 
populated, and the outside pressure is such as 
to prevent the expansion of their people ; but 
in this country such a result need not be look¬ 
ed for in many generations. Indeed, it will 
probably be years before those great marshes 
of this State, the Montezuma and the Tona- 
wanda, will be brought under cultivation, 
notwithstanding their elevation above the 
lake level is such as to afford a perfect dis¬ 
charge of their surplus waters, if the proper 
ditching and drainage were effected. That is 
an enterprise too gigantic, however, to be 
undertaken by individual resources, and must 
be done, if done at all, by corporate capital or 
by State munificence. The feasibility of the 
thing being established, and the ability of cor¬ 
porate or State capital to do it, the only 
question then remaining is, will it pay ? At 
the present prices of land and labor in the 
State, it undoubtedly will not; but the time 
will come when these extensive marshes will 
be rendered, by a gigantic system of drainage, 
as valuable as any lands in the State. But to 
effect this object, a vast amount of money 
must be expended without any adequate im¬ 
mediate return ; such an expenditure as has in 
fact been made in some of the eastern counties 
of England, where hundreds of miles of ditches 
have been cut, some of them to the width of 
one hundred feet; the channels of rivers have 
been straightened and leveed, and a waste of 
bog and marsh redeemed from a state of wild 
and savage nature, and converted into fruitful 
fields. 
“ This district,” says a writer in Chamber's 
Edinburgh Journal, “ comprises nearly the 
whole of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and 
Huntingdonshire, and much of Northampton 
and Norfolk. It is nearly seventy miles long 
on the eastern side, by ten to thirty miles 
wide, and was formerly the most wretched and 
profitless land in England. It is now, however, 
becoming, year by year, as valuable as the 
manner and progress of its change from its 
ancient condition to its present, from fenny 
waste to fertility and cultivation, has been 
curious and difficult.” The writer, after giv¬ 
ing, according to his ideas, the geological 
history of the fen, says—“ there are huge 
trunks of trees, oak, beech, and alder, lying on 
its surface embedded in the antiseptic peat, 
their roots still firmly twisted in the soil on 
which ages ago they stood. There are the re¬ 
mains of forest animals that once grazed be-» 
neath their shade, buried in them ; bones and 
tusks of the wild boar, horns of wild cattle, 
red deer, and elk, and skeletons of the beavers 
that once colonized the rivers of the plains. 
There is that same peat and bog, like nothing 
SOUTH-DOWN BUCK 
Two weeks since we gave a picture of a 
South-Down Ewe, a portrait probably of some 
former dweller of the Downs of England. 
Above we present a superior engraving of 
“ Young York,” a South-Down Ram imported 
by Messrs. Morris & Becar, and winner of 
the first prize in his class at the New York 
State Show in 1854. He is now the property 
of I,. G. Morris, of Mount Fordham, West¬ 
chester county, N. Y. 
ROADS AND ROAD MAKING, 
The season for highway work is rapidly 
approaching, and the annual farce of throwing 
away some millions of dollars upon the roads 
is to be enacted. We do not believe that 
there is any where so vicious a system in re¬ 
gard to road3 as in this State, nor is there any 
one subject that demands thorough reform by 
the Legislature, so much as our highway 
system. If the object were to see how little 
good could be done with a given amount of 
money, nothing could exceed its adaptation 
to the end desired. The importance of good 
roads to a community, can hardly be estima¬ 
ted. The prosperity of the people, the value 
of property, and the density of population 
depends upon the roads which lead to the 
market for the surplus products of the country. 
Railroads have a great value, but the common 
roads of the country are of infinitely more 
value, so far as the farmer is concerned. 
But we cannot expect any permanent im¬ 
provement in our roads, until there shall be a 
thorough and universal knowledge among the 
farmers as to what constitutes a good road. 
Hardly any two men in the same district 
agree upon the best plan, and probably not 
one in a whole township has ever given the 
subject any serious thought, and consequently 
there is no regular plan carried on from year 
to year to improve the roads. One path- 
master puts on gravel, another muck. One 
year the path-master makes the gravel road 
twelve feet wide, the next year his successor 
reduces it to six, with a sharp slope, so that 
the travel is always in the same place, and in 
wet weather cut up badly. One fills up the 
ruts with soil from the ditches, another puts 
in stone. The result is that for but a small 
portion of the year, are our roads really 
passable. 
The amount paid annually for highway 
labor, is enough in most districts to keep the 
roads in good repair. The whole number of 
days’ work, as authorized by the law, is not 
less than three days to every taxable inhabi¬ 
tant, or as it is usually assessed, one day for 
every three hundred dollars of assessed valua¬ 
tion in the town soil,—would give for the 
whole State about four and a half millions of 
days. But deduct one-third for the valuation 
of cities, and it would leave upwards of three 
millions of day’s work for the country roads. 
If we add to this the one-third usually put on 
by the overseer, and the higher rate adopted 
over most of the country, we shall have the 
highway tax at a sum not less than four mil¬ 
lions^ dollars. The importance of this tax 
may m) estimated by comparing it with the 
other taxes of the State. The whole amount 
of taxes paid last year was:—To the State, 
$1,023,115; Counties, $6,G08,G02 ; Town tax, 
$2,00G,5G1 ; making a total of $9,G38,2Y8.— 
else but itself, a soaky, black, treacherous, 
useless mass, when wet; when dry, a soil flat, 
light, and fertile beyond compare. There 
stand the clay highlands of Ely, Thornev, 
March, &c., surrounded on all sides by fen, 
that, a few centuries back, were veritable 
islands in an impassable morass. There, in 
short, is the great level of the fens, revealing 
in its varied substance its embryo history, and 
retaining all its peculiar characteristics, save 
those of which the perseverance and skill of 
man have deprived it, to develop the better 
ones they hindered and concealed, and to rend¬ 
er its desolate boggy wastes available for the 
abode and sustenance of the human race.” 
Straw is now selling very readily in many 
parts of Western New York at three dollars 
a load, and even higher prices are by no means 
uncommon. Under all these circumstances it 
must be very evident that it will “pay" to 
take care of it. A few years ago I built a 
Straw Barn, 42 feet square, 20 feet posts, and 
set up on stones and blocks four or five feet 
from the ground, capable of holding the 
straw of about eight hundred bushels of 
wheat. It : s cohered with good pine shingles 
and sided with pine boards planed and paint¬ 
ed, and cost about $250. I have no doubt 
but it has paid a rate of interest on its cost 
that would be considered rank “usury" in the 
eye of the law. Its advantages are, perfect 
! preservation of the whole, without the ordina¬ 
ry waste, which is unavoidable in stalks, par- 
■ ticularly of the chaff and finer parts. It re- 
j quires no particular skill in mowing away, and 
J not more than half the labor requisite in 
j stacking. A sudden shower finds “ all right," 
and threshing can be done at different times 
without the necessity of “ topping out the 
stack.” It saves “ cutting down,” and the 
labor and vexation of removing a frozen mas 3 
from the top of the pile before foddering can 
begin ; the wind does not blow away the straw, 
it is always dry and fit for use, and if any is 
left it is safe till called for. 
At least one-third of all the straw is wasted 
for feeding purposes in this country, and the 
aggregate loss thereby is enormous. Any one 
may be satisfied of this by viewing the multi¬ 
tudes of mis-shapen heaps called stacks which 
occupy our yards and fields. Much is wasted, 
and all is injured, by the ordinary manage¬ 
ment. The rain comes down from the top till 
it reaches the steam that comes up from the 
bottom. My own practice, when I do stack, 
is to build a foundation, as is customary for 
hay, and allow the air to circulate beneath,— 
keep the middle full, cause the stack to settle 
as much as possible while building by con¬ 
stantly walking over it and occasionally go on 
with five or six men, and let them spring and 
jump. The reason for this is, that when a 
stack is laid up loose, the peak or top resting 
mainly in the centre forces it down below the 
circumference in such a way that the layers 
descend as they extend inwardly ; of course, as 
water has a habit of running down hill, it 
passes towards the centre of the stack when 
it falls on the outer edge. Threshing machines 
usually discharge a great quantity of straw, 
and not unfrequently, from scarcity of hands, 
indifference, or inexperience, stacking is very 
poorly done. In all cases a stack should be 
well topped out and secured. 
My friend Capt. Doty sometimes covers his 
straw with long boards, and I have found that 
method serviceable. Straw should be used 
freely during cold weather when the appetite 
is good, and should be fed in racks and clean 
places, with a constant eye to economy. 
The importance of cutting grain early for 
the benefit of both grain and straw should be 
more regarded. h. t. b. 
PREPARING BONES FOR MANURE, 
STRAW—ITS USE AND PRESERVATION, 
Straw is fast becoming an important agri¬ 
cultural product. In the present scarcity of 
fodder, it sells for high prices, and it is the 
chief dependence of many people for winter¬ 
ing their cattle. Though not specially suited 
to young stock, which require nutritious food 
better adapted to the growth of bone and 
muscle, yet for the purpose of feeding with 
grain and roots, to give the proper bulb and 
variety, and as a resource when other supplies 
fail, its value is beyond estimate. Were it not 
for straw, the grain growing districts of New 
York would have been compelled to reduce 
their stock the present winter about one-half. 
At present the custom is to feed straw plenti¬ 
fully, or let the cattle feed themselves, and it 
is expected that a great share will remain un¬ 
consumed ; but by feeding roots, apples or 
grain liberally, no more straw need be given 
than will be eaten up clean. This latter 
course should be pursued. Lands are attain¬ 
ing a high value, and we should make the most 
of them—to do this we should more and more 
adopt the plan of raising grain, roots, Ac., to 
feed in connection with straw ; by this means 
a much larger number of cattle may be kept 
than could be on pasturage and hay. Meadows 
will become in grain growing districts almost 
an obsolete idea. Clover, instead of being 
cut for hay, should be plowed under to con- 
tribute to the growth of grain. 
It may not be easy to determine the relative 
value of straw for feeding purposes. Some 
farmers estimate it at one-third and others 
one-fourth the value of hay by weight. My 
own opinion is, that about 3% tons of straw 
for ordinary feeding would be equal to a ton 
of hay, taking an average quality of each.— j 
Prof. Johnson’s analysis seems to favor this j 
opinion. He makes straw have of sugar and i 
starch more than half, and of gluten, Ac., j 
about one-fifth the amount supplied by an ■ 
equal quautitv of mc-adow hay. Straw seems 
better adapted to ordinary feeding than for 
fattening purposes, as it dees not largely 
abound in oily matter. 
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