TERMS, *3.00 PER YEAR.] 
PROCRESS AND IMPROVEMENT 
[SINCLE NO. TEN CENT8 
VOL XYIII. NO. 33.} ROCHESTER, N. Y.-FOR THE WEEK ENDING SATURDAY, AUGUST 17,1867. 1 WHOLE NO. 917 
ESTABLISHED IN I860 
mind do the thinking, pursue the investigation, 
solve the problem, and not the teachers’. The 
true object of the teacher should be to learn the 
pupils to instruct themselves. They should be 
led to investigate for themselves and to draw 
their own conclusions, with as little assistance 
from the tcaehor as possible. This is develop¬ 
ing their nature—educating it. The Common 
School should do this—should fit all the children 
of the State for pursniug any of the ordinary 
avocationB of life. 
This system is now gaining ground with teach¬ 
ers everywhere. The Normal School, at Oswego, 
founded mostly on this plan, is gaining adherents 
rapidly. This school Is turning ont hundreds of 
teachers imbued with this method; and the 
various Normal Schools, now being established 
in various parts of the State, will soon supply a 
more advanced class of teachers, and onr Com¬ 
mon Schools will lake a higher rank. 
FREE SCHOOLS. 
Our last Legislature, with great unanimity, 
passed an act io relieve our Empire State from 
the odium of the Kato Bill, and to establish 
Free Schools. Let us thank them for this tardy 
justice. It means ■mue.h to the children of the 
State. No further question can be made of the 
ability of parents to pay the school bill of their 
children. Neither parsimony nor poverty need 
further deprive children of the benefits of the 
District School. It is the Li/jht House for young 
humanity, and if they but heed its light may 
MOORE’S R.URAL NEW-YORKER, 
AX ORIGINAL WERRLY 
AGRICULTURAL, LITERARY AND FAMILY NEWSPAPER 
CONDUCTED BY D. D. T. MOORE. 
With an Able Corps of Assistants and Contributors. 
Hon. IlENKY 8. RANDALL, LL. D., Brtttor of tae.De- 
partroent of Sheep Husbandry. 
Hon. T. C. PETERS, late President N. T. State Ag’l 
Society, Southern Corresponding Editor. 
GLEZEN F. WILCOX, Associate Editor. 
Thb Rural New-Yorkkb Is designed to be unsur¬ 
passed in Value, 1‘nrlty, and Variety of Contents. Its 
Conductor earnestly labors to rentier the Rural a Reli¬ 
able Guide on all the important Practical, Bolontlflc and 
other Subject* connected with the business of those 
whose Interests It zealously advocates. As a Family 
Journal It is eminently Instructive and Entertaining — 
being so conducted that it can he safely taken to the 
Homes of people of Intelligence,taste and discrimination. 
It embraces more Agricultural, Horticultural,Solentlflc^ 
Educational, Literary and News Matter, Interspersed 
with appropriate eugruvings, than any other Jonrnal,— 
rendering H by far the moat complete Agricultural, 
Literabv and Family Kbwai*ai‘*b id America. 
skelton’s patent iron one-way or turnwrest plow 
these show not so much by their tools as by 
their wheat that they know how to till the soil. 
Hungary has sent two dozen plows, which for 
worktmuiship of the compound wood and iron 
sort, far surpass all others, but the beams and 
the handles are straight, which does not seem 
right to ns, and the forward end of the beam is 
carried on an independent cart with wheels from 
a foot and a half to two feet in diameter. From 
Greece there are a few rude agricultural tools, 
but lu one of the plows there is an idea em¬ 
bodied that might be turned to good account in 
a stubble plow by our makeis. The novel fea- 
side. ThiB rcuders it necessary to have the 
coulter and standard oflket three or four inches, 
so as to come intofproper position, and it is the 
offset that constitutes the improvement, as the 
stubble and straw that is continually clogging an 
ordinary plow will, as it follows up on the hori¬ 
zontal parts, fall off by Its own weight and thus 
preveut clogging. Russia sends one plow — a 
counterfeit American. Austria several of good 
workmanship, but which are stouter than with 
us, if possible, l’russia, a few of iron and steel, 
of excellent workmanship and passable form. 
Belgium, a great variety of all conceivable forms, 
but the right one. Franeefchas a quarter of an 
acre of ground covered with plows, but they are 
almost all of them rubbish ; the only ones that 
make aDy pretensions to novelty, are the side- 
hill sort—two complete plows, one above and 
the other below the beam, to be reversed at the 
end of each furrow—very top-heavy, loose- 
jointed concerns. 
England, far ahead ol' all other countries in 
their combination of form, design and workman¬ 
ship, is represented by two of her leading firms 
in the common plows, and by one or two others 
in steam plows. The ordinary plows are wholly 
of iron and steel, and (with the exception of the 
two wheels in front,) they are simple as well as 
long and graceful. Kansomes & Sims’ Turn¬ 
wrest Plow, as it is called—that h, a side-hill 
plow to use on level ground to do away with 
dead furrows— is a complete invention. By re¬ 
versing a handle (wliieh is situated between the 
ordinary handles,) from side to side one mould¬ 
board is drawn back and turned into position to 
form a laud-side, while the other is put into po¬ 
sition for a mould-board. The accompanying 
drawing will give a better idea of this plow than 
a page of description. It will be seen that the 
plow is fitted with two wheels, the same as the 
ordinary English plow. These are used only 
when the plow is used as a common plow. 
When used as a side-hill plow then ooly one of 
the wheels is used, or neither, at the option of 
the plowman. 
Now that we have seen what the world use, 
shall we fall buck into our original groove?— 
Illinois to the Chicago scoop; Pennsylvania to 
her Pittsburgh*6tttb and twist, and New England 
to her boasted free soil revolvers ?— or shall we 
try something else?—try an English hard pan 
eork-serew, and determine whether it is not 
possible for ns even to profit by this Great Paris 
Exposition ? J- e. s. 
asserts that complete protection from dogs in 
counties near our large citieB, would materially 
reduce the price of mutton to the consumer. 
We will remark that if the people ot cities and 
villages, who complaiu so much of the high 
prices of meat, would endeavor to abate this dog 
uuisauec to farmers instead of fostering it, they 
might procure good mutton aud therefore beef 
at much cheaper rates. Heretofore fanners 
have failed to urge this view of the case, with 
the effect it is capable of producing. Let them 
enlist the sympathies ol' LLconsuming classes 
by showing the prospect /J' cheaper meats, and 
tm. -»-•-- 
“ Breed and Color a nnmbiitr.” 
•‘Critic” sends us the following from the 
dairy regions of New York:—“ A writer, in a 
late number of the Farm and Fireside, discours¬ 
ing on the subject of neat cattle remarks:—‘I 
care not for breed or color—it is all a humbng 
for dairy profit. Breeding stock is another 
story.’ 
“ This seems to me an absurdity, since, if for 
stock purposes, breed and color are important, 
why not for those of the dairy ? It is true that 
an occasional cow, small, scrawny and of no par¬ 
ticular breed, is found to be a good milker, but 
this is &imply an exception, and not one person 
in a hundred would be satisfied to breed from 
each, even for 1 dairy profit,’ when animals of 
greater perfection of form are available for the 
purpose. It Is too late iu the day to assert, 
with a prospect of gaining general credence, 
that breed is of no consequence—is a humbug 
—even for 4 dairy profit.’ Great improvement 
iu stock has characterized the efforts of breeders, 
during the lust quarter of a century, in which the 
dairy department has largely shared.” 
with the sum specified. Suppose you invest 
your capital in seeds, team and machinery, and 
work hired land for a year or two. You can 
see plenty of opportunities, if you use your wits 
and eenses, in n comparatively new country. 
You will find plenty of men everywhere who 
have won a healthy independence through farm 
pursuits, beginning with no capital but their 
hands, health and strong wills. And there uro 
yet plenty of sitnilur chances. 
PLOWS AT THE GREAT EXPOSITION 
Paws, July, 1867. 
Let us take a turn about the Champ dc Mars 
and note a few of the many things that would, 
if seen, and ought to if well described, he of in- 
bCiC'Qb lv Vito rQdUOiO Vl vuo nu>AL. A/m Ml/ 
wish to survey our field, instruments of the 
finest and most accurate workmanship could 
here be found to do it;—did wc wish to fence it, 
here can be obtained patterns of fencing of all 
materials, from the simplest to the most expen¬ 
sive, and were a wire fence our choice a simple 
device for straining the wires, consisting of only 
two pieces of iron, one a piece of band iron and 
the other a casting, forms one of the neatest 
ever got np for the purpose. Had our field to 
be cleared, as I Lave seen no steam saw for cut¬ 
ting down trees nor steam stump extractor, we 
should have to resort to the old process, and of 
axes you can take your choice, for there are nil 
kinds, from the French, which seem identical 
with the old Iudiau hatchet so often found on 
the Indian lots, to the latest styles of the New 
England manufacturer. Wouldn’t a steam ma¬ 
chine to cut down trees, cat the Jogs, cut up the 
brush to supply its own fuel, to pull the stumps, 
level the ground and its own road, be a huge in¬ 
vention? But all this is stuff and brush and 
rubbish. Let us turn it under—and for this 
work let us look about for a plow. Let us do 
as charity should, “ begin at home.” 
Of the American plows, a dozen or more all 
together —a few from Pittsburgh, some from 
Hartford, aud one or two from Illinois,— ail but 
one look as though they were constructed by 
our poorest makers and on the principle of of¬ 
fering the greatest amount of resistance to the 
forward motion of the horse. The one plow, a 
steel one 1 should think, with an iron beam, 
very elegant in form and of elegant workman¬ 
ship, has its mould-hoard all slathered over with 
a spread eagle and a great, useless spider of 
round iron work of the old shovel and tongs va¬ 
riety stuck in between the handle. How sur¬ 
prising it is that some of onr best workmen 
have such shocking bad taste, or, rather, want 
of taste. Certainly the man who could fiuish 
up the beam and the clevis could finish as well 
the mould-board, and the man who could forge 
such iron work could have made two properly 
curved handles in the place ol the butcher knife 
one at present on the plow. But as it is ouiy a 
step from the sublime to the ridiculous, so too 
it i6 but a few, in the exhibition at least, from 
the Occidental to the Oriental, and therefore let 
us step over and see what has been sent from 
Egypt. A very large wooden plow of the oldest 
of the oid styles. An extra well -formed oak 
beam, though long and heavy—a four-inch 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.-No. II, 
The greatness and strength of the North com¬ 
pared with the South—the loyalty of the one and 
the treason of the other—lay in the Common 
Schools of the North and the want of them in 
the'South. Our only safety in amalgamating all 
nations with our own, taking the ignorant masses 
of Europe into our family and adopting them, is 
in the Common School, that great Bcthesda, 
where'UiC ignorance of the multitude may lie 
washed away. 
But it may be said that, the teachers are not 
qualified to teac h the natural sciences, and there¬ 
fore this scheme cannot he adopted. At present 
this is true, as only a few Common School teach¬ 
ers lu tbo State are thus qualified. But these 
Normal Schools are instituted expressly to edu¬ 
cate teachers, and it is to be hoped that the 
standard will be raised and the teachers fitted to 
Instruct pupils in the elements of the natural 
sciences. The principal supporters of the Free 
School iu this country, are farmers, and it is 
but jnat that they should have a school adapted 
to their wants. And whether they shall have 
such a school depends upon themselves. Their 
voice, uttered with any degree of unanimity, lu 
over so low a whisper, will be heard und heeded 
by the Law Makers. They urc the power in the 
State; let them command. e. w. s. 
pulses to the Common Schools. This is the com¬ 
mon nursery of knowledge for the people. Here 
should the rudiments ofseientificagricnlture.be 
taught. Here rdiouklthe mind imbibe, in the .-Am¬ 
plest forms, the elements of Chemistry, Geology, 
Mineralogy, Entomology and Bolauy. This may 
seem, to some, Impossible of introduction into 
these elementary schools. But the elements of 
the natural sciences are not more difficult of com¬ 
prehension, by the pupils of these schools, than 
are Geography, Arithmetic and Grammar. They 
can mostly be taught with objects to aid the un¬ 
derstanding. In this way, the child will drink 
in the facts and even the technical terms, as easily 
as the philosopher. The memory cannot, use¬ 
fully, be crammed with technical terms without 
the objects to which to apply them, but with 
these, all is simple and caBy for the child. In 
fact, children very readily comprehend the sim¬ 
ple facts of nature when thus illustrated—nmch 
more cosily than abstract ideas. A child may 
earlier be taught to understand the simple ele¬ 
ments of Botany than Arithmetic or Grammar. 
The tree, the stem, the leaf, the flower may be 
present for examination. The pupil observes 
the peculiar form, size aud color of each 
variety, compares them together, learns the 
terms by which to describe each, without bur¬ 
dening the memory, as the word is associated 
with uu object. Thus, also, may Geology, Min¬ 
eralogy and Entomology be taught with objects. 
Chemistry is not so easily illustrated with natu¬ 
ral objects as it requires, besides, an apparatus 
for this purpose; but a simple one might be kept 
in every school to illustrate some of the ordinary 
phenomena of Chemistry. 
The perceptive liicultiea of children are usually 
active, and, with a proper training, would be 
still more so. They trike great delight in learn¬ 
ing all the facte about new objects, and this 
inquisitiveness should be gratified in every ra¬ 
tional way. We see the natural order in children 
Is to learn facts before abstract ideas, but the 
ordinary method, pursued bus been the reverse. 
The attempt has bceu to fill their minds with ab¬ 
stract knowledge, with no effort to teach its 
application. This has been felt by them only as 
a weary task, to be escaped if possible. But 
introduce to their minds, iu the proper way, 
objects of natural science, and their listiessness 
will change to eager attention — the teacher will 
be their most interesting companion. The old 
way of teaching everything abstractly is now 
giving place to the practical method, of unfold¬ 
ing nature to the pupil and directing his mind In 
the channel of BClf-euUnro. The teacher’s duty 
is only to open the way, show the scholar the 
road, stimulate his investigations, lead him 
eagerly in tbe pursuit of knowledge, but let his 
Straw 8hedti for Winter shelter. 
11 Progressive Farmer” writes us from Iowa 
to 44 urge farmers—especially western ones—who 
lack ample bums, sheds and stables for shelter¬ 
ing their stock iu winter, to make their straw 
stacks available for this purpose. Thrashing 
time is the proper season t,o construct these 
cheap shelters. Erect a frame of strong posts 
and poles and stack the straw on and around it, 
so as to form a shed. But little labor is expended 
thus, and a great deal of comfort and of course 
profit, is derived from it.” Tbe idea is practi¬ 
cal ; we endorse it. 
ATMOSPHERIC PLANT FOOD.-ORGANIC 
MANURES. 
In my last I did not mean that a soil exhaust¬ 
ed of tho mineral elements of plants could he 
made by Ullage to bear crops by atmospheric 
aid alone. The soil on which Mr. Lawks got 
fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre, year after 
year without manuring, was not exhausted of 
the mineral or inorganic elements, potash, 
phosphorus, lime, »Sc.; yet 200 lbs. of the sul¬ 
phate of ammonia to the acre doubled the crop 
of wheat. This clearly shows to every farmer, 
the imperative necessity of well saving his stall 
manure, that the urine which contains tbe most 
of the nitrogen may be absorbed und saved in¬ 
tact. Poor, rain-washed or flre-fanged stall 
manure has lost a great share of its nitrogeu, 
although it still retains Us mineral elements, 
capable only, ns Mr. Lawes has proved, of pro¬ 
ducing half a crop. 
As red clover, cow peas, and other leguminous 
plants are throe timcB richer in nitrogen than 
the narrow-leaved grasses, they are especially 
valuable to plow-under to enrich the soil with 
ammonia salts. Siiperphosjihato of lime, if uot 
made from burned bones contains much ammo¬ 
nia as well as soluble phosphate of lime. Finely 
crushed bones though uot immediately soluble, 
soon give up their ammouia to tbe roots ot 
plants, and the phosphate of lime becomes 
slowly soluble in a weU tilled soil. But pure, 
dry Peruvian guano, is undoubtedly the most 
immediate amendment, according to its weight, 
of any of the commercial manures; and the fact 
that its power is so Boon exhausted, only proves 
its superior solubility. What is lost in manure . 
is saved in tbe crop. * 
Merits of the Lombardy Poplar. 
A correspondent writing from Omaha, Neb., 
inquires for knowledge respecting this tree, 
whether it will grow from cuttings, if its timber 
is as valuable as that of the cotton wood, if it 
grows us rapidly, and whether it is cleanly in re¬ 
gard to worms aud insects V It is readily grown 
from cuttings either of wood one year old or 
that three or four years old. It does not pos¬ 
sess any great merit as a timber tree, but its 
growth is rapid. A moist soil is preferable to a 
dry one. If aDy of pur readers can recounneud 
it particularly, we should like to bear from 
them. We cannot. 
though long and heavy 
square upright post with two pegB for handles— 
an iron point and coulter, aud a plain flat slab of 
wood-for a mould-board. A rude eaough struc¬ 
ture to look at, certainly,— but as it is not un¬ 
reasonable to suppose that the man in Illinois 
hasEenthis plow here from the far West toshow 
the world Low a plow ought to be made, so too 
may we not suppose that the Egyptian, whose 
plow has stood the test of 3,000 years, bus sent 
it also, to teach the world the same lesson ? 
Well, yts, and with just about as much reason 
in the one case as the other. 
Coming along up from the south and east 
through Japan, China, Turkey and Siberia — all 
Fannins with 8mnll Muau«. 
“ M. D. W.,” Company H, 1st Infantry, New 
Orleans, writes:—“I am a soldier, but intend 
becoming a fanner if 1 can do so with five hun¬ 
dred dollars. Would you advise me to com¬ 
mence with so small u sum ? What State would 
you advise an unmarried man, 27 years old, to 
settle in? You will probably say, ‘in to the 
RURAL FARMERS’ CLUB 
Dear Mntton and Cheap Duse. 
“G. 8.,” lihinebeck, N. Y., writes us in favor 
of taxing dogs to the extent that a sufficient 
revenue will accrue to cover ail losses they occa¬ 
sion. As the law now stands a Dock may be 
worried aud immensely damaged, and nothing 
recovered therefor. The farmer’s interest in this 
mattA gets very little help either from the press 
or legislators. He advises farmers to note this 
matter when they elect their iuw-makers, and 
