82 Buffalo St., Rochester, 
41 Park Row, New York, 
FOR THE WEEK ENBING SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1868 
as is the maxim, “ Knowledge is-Pomr,'''' only a few 
fully appreciate the truth which it expresses. 
Before discussing in detail Wheat Culture in the 
Southwest, and calling attention to excellent wheat 
lands in Southwestern Virginia, in large sections of 
Kentucky and Tennessee, in a part of Northern 
Georgia, in Northern and Central Alabama, and in 
Northern Mississippi, it is deemed pertinent to 
notice some facts pertaining to the wheat markets 
of Great Britain and Europe,— for these markets 
have a direct hearing on the value of our best wheat 
lauds in all the Valley of the Mississippi. 
Why is it that England needs on an average about 
one hundred million bushels of wheat from other 
countries a year, after importing so much guano, so 
many hones and other phosphates, fertilisers in the 
shape of seeds and oil cake, and manufacturing so 
much manure at homc‘ J England is a type of the 
most advanced and successful enterprise in Agri¬ 
culture, Manufactures, Mining and Commerce, in 
Europe, and the upshot of the whole matter is to 
give her people both the power and the disposition 
to consume vastly more wheat than they raise. The 
rapid accumulation of wealth on the Continent from 
the use of steam power, improved machinery, cheap 
labor, and other causes, is conferring on the people 
of Europe the ability to cease living on the meal of 
oats, rye, barley and maize,—on rice, potatoes, chest¬ 
nuts and other poor substitutes for good wheat 
bread,—and consume wheat t.o an extent wholly 
without a parallel in man’s history. 
This power of consumption as applied to wheat 
is no ephemeral affair. The increase of population 
is no measure of its growth, neither in the Old nor 
in the New World. Indeed, the principal reason 
why it takes over four bushels of corn here to buy 
one of wheat at this time, Is that our children geu- 
erally have already learned to prefer wheat biscuit 
and bread to hoe cakes and com dodgers—the bread 
of the South and Southwest from time immemorial. 
A higher standard of domestic comfort, based on 
more productive industry and greater knowledge, 
almost everywhere, creates a demand for wheat 
which fanners may profitably study as a part 
of their professional education. This rapidly in¬ 
creasing and expanding demand is not confined 
to any one continent; and, taken in connection 
with the greatly improved facilities for cheap trans¬ 
portation, both by land and water, it. must give 
to wheat culture a degree of stability unknown to 
this branch of agriculture in any previous years. 
Hence, good wheat soils Ad climates, and the art 
of raising wheat in the most economical way, with¬ 
out injury to the land, are subjects that deserve 
thorough investigation. D. Lee. 
Gap Creek, Knox Co., Tenn. 
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT.” 
AMONG THE STUMPS-NEW SERIES-HI 
MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER 
AN ORIGINAL WEEKLY 
AGRICULTURAL, LITERARY AND FAMILY NEWSPAPER, 
Farm Improvements. 
Southern New York, while it has a progressive 
character, and exhibits many specimens of thrift and 
industry, certainly has many “waste places” that 
ought to be “ built up. " Here is land 
that, till lately, has been held by lum- 
tiering companies, who have stript it of 
lib sawing timber, and left it covered with 
small trees, and old logs in every 
HrnB| slate of decomposition, over which bush¬ 
el es, briars, ftud brambles are spreading the 
wS mantle of their questionable charity. I 
concede that the man who clears up such 
i f laud pays for it. At the present price of 
f 3$ la, ' or 5t cnn,t bc J° ,u ' tor S50 per acre, i 
I Mi would advise a rnau to go to the far West 
l before he buys the roughest parts of it 
, .tt lor a farm, Adjoining farmers should buy 
it, cut and burn the bushes, sow timothy 
SjPw’j and red-top, and gradually work it into 
ygL va pasture. 
• The greatest error, hereabouts, i n farm- 
TtBj ius ” is tlic running of land hard to oats 
fell P other spring crops, using little rna- 
mire, and seeding it down laic in the 
Hll spring, very imperfectly, using little 
■ ?oed ’ 10 lie y ear after year in a compara- 
lively unproductive state. The first ob- 
•* ect ’ imd fanners begin to understand it, 
pjPgP? v \ should bc to get a good growth of grass— 
■JtJ grass herd'is our “best holt.” Every- 
W f thing should yield to grass. If raising 
'-. mLA other crops diminishes the grass produc- 
jjj'flrl * elements in the soil, abjure those 
crops. If grubbing up bushes, digging 
up and picking up stones, summer- 
fallowing, subsoiling, surface and under- 
draining, ashing, liming, plastering, guanoing, su- 
per-phospbAting, mil Increase the grass enough to pay 
cost, then subsoil, super-phosphate, and do any¬ 
thing to get the most grass at the least expense. 
Try all these things on a small scale, and then prac¬ 
tice the best of them on a large scale. Be sure of 
one thing—if you <lo sell hay off the farm, bring on 
plaster, lime, ashes, or something to return as much 
fertility as you carry off’; keep an account with your 
land, and honestly; don’t cheat, but pay your dues. 
1 here are a great many points iu good farming ,—but 
the getting of the soil in the best condition for pro¬ 
ducing the. particular crops to be grown upon it, is 
the most important, practically outweighiug all oth¬ 
ers. Of course the crops must be Well put in and be 
well taken care of ,—hut f the ground is mil prepared, 
there is very little difficulty afterwards. My friend 
Freeborn has promised to show me some tine farms 
near the county seat of Allegany Co. I am going to 
■■500 them, but 1 do not expect that the present gen¬ 
eration of farmers will generally get up to a very 
high standard ; there is too much to do, and there is 
not a disposition to do it all at once. 
Here we have some chronic ailments. Tills used 
to be a lumber country. These hills and valleys used 
to be covered with pine, oak, hemlock, ash, cucum¬ 
ber, basswood, cherry, i'husc woods have mostly 
departed, to subserve the purposes of civilized life 
all over the eoutinont. They engrossed in their 
transfer a large share of the attention and labor of 
the citizens. Now the lumberman’s vocation is 
gone, and the farmer’s has been taken up; but the 
lumbermen retain some of their old 
habits. Tame a Wild animal; it will 
never become quite domestic. The lum¬ 
berman farmer, when it comes winter, 
looks wistfully to his remaining trees. 
Will any of them do to saw? Can he 
work some shingles out between the rot¬ 
ten places ? He finds a pine tree that has 
been on the ground thirty years, appa¬ 
rently quite rotten; he cuts into it two 
or three iuelics, and finds it perfectly 
sound and of excellent quality ? It’s a 
prize, and he appropriates it. If he does 
uot find full employment in this way, he 
i takes his team and starts for the oil 
j region, to draw oil, or to the nearest 
pinery, where he hauls logs to hia heart’s 
content at so much per thousand feet. 
In the meantime there are some stone 
heaps that he might have drawn together 
for a wall; some old logs and chunks, 
l which would not make shingles, but 
* ijjji , which do make an ugly looking farm, 
k 1 ;! Ii lilfr, that he might have piled up in a thaw, to 
5k : bum in the 
CONDUCTED BY D. D. T. MOORE, 
With a Corps of Able Associates and Contributors 
Hon. HENRY S. RANDALL, LL. D., 
Editor of tlie Department or Sheep Hnshnndry. 
G. F. WILCOX and A. A. IiOPKINS, Associate Editors 
Dr. DANIEL LEE \NT> Hon. THEO. C. PETERS, 
Southern Corresponding Editors. 
HIRAM BUMPHRFJY axd REUBEN D. JONES, 
Assistant, and Commercial Editors. 
Special Couiributors, 
P. BARRY, F. R. ELLIOTT, E. W. STEWART 
H. T. BROOKS, JOHN E. SWEET, JAMES VICK, 
MRS. MART J. HOLMES. MRS. L. E. LYMAN. 
Tub Rural New-Yorker is designed to lie unsurpassed 
in Value, Purity, and Variety ol Contents. Its Conductors 
earnestly labor to render It a Reliable Guide on the important 
Practical, Scientific and other Subjects connected with the 
business of those whose Interests It zealously advocates. 
As a Family Journal it la eminently Instructive and Enter¬ 
taining,—adapted to people of intelligence and taste in both 
Town and Country. It, embraces more Agricultural, Horti¬ 
cultural, Scientific, Educational. Literary. Nows and Com¬ 
mercial Matter, with appropriate Illustrations, than any 
other Journal,—rendering it by far the most complete Rural, 
Literary, Family and Business Newspaper In America. 
%* All Business Letters, articles for publication, etc., should 
be addressed to Rochester, until otherwise announced. 
lSf~ for Terms and other particulars see 6th and sth pages. 
agricultural 
JACK, — THREE YEARS OLD, FIFTEEN ILAND8 AND THREE INCHES HIGH. 
of stock they are designed to portray. In this con¬ 
nection we may appropriately re-publish the follow¬ 
ing from an article by Mnj, li, T. Brooks: 
The enormous consumption of food by the teams 
of this country, is a subject for serious apprehen¬ 
sion. I know many men who live on a short allow¬ 
ance, and devote their energies of body and mind to 
the feeding of a pair of horses. Many who raise 
large crops of corn, oats, and bay, find a market 
more strictly “domestic" than even a “protec¬ 
tionist " would insist upon. What can be done to 
lighten the burdens which m —not the teuins — 
have to carry? Steam, I apprehend, belongs to the 
distant future,—" Cruiser” oIjojn, but no Rabey has 
yet coaxed steam into the diversified labors of the 
farm! The spade and the wheelbarrow may do for 
China and for Britain,— we have not too many men, 
so brute work must be. done by brutes. 
Allow me to speak a word for my friend, the jack¬ 
ass — I have ft great many friends of that soil,. I 
speak now for the genuine, article, that has suffered, 
it must be confessed, by being associated in men’s 
minds with all sorts of lacltulaislcal people. I send 
you herewith a drawing of my friend, omitting the 
subordinate and immaterial parts, [We omit the 
Half portrait, and giv*a full length.— Ei>. | 
You see that he is handsome, and grave, and wise; 
he is also musical and polite. lie might not suit ft 
dandy, but better men tliau you or I have rode on 
him, and may again. His relative, the mule, is not 
unknown to fame—inauy a man has found a grave 
who never would have lived to get one, if the hardy 
JACKS AND MULES 
The Agricultural Press is prolific in suggestions 
and advice about winter work—the Rural gives its 
share,—uud, from reading the whole, a tyro in fann¬ 
ing would cornu to t he conclusion that, this season of 
the year ii one of almost infinite time to the hus¬ 
bandman, and that it is really difficult for him to 
find proper employment to occupy his leisure. Re¬ 
flect briefly on the quantity of work laid out; there 
is the wood pile to be heaped up for summer use ; 
the manure pile to be spread from the sled to forward 
operations in the spring; the forest to be stripped of 
fence and building timber; muck hauled from the 
swamp, stone from the. field, if the weather admits; 
plowing forwarded, where the climate allows; visits 
exchanged; Farmers'Clubs organized and sustained, 
and the Agricultural Journals subscribed for and read. 
Saying nothing about feeding and stabling cattle, 
hogs, sheep, and horses, getting them to water and 
making them generally comfortable, we think the 
amount of work mentioned sufficient, if done, to 
keep most farmers from suffering any illness that is 
begotten of idleness. 
But really iu these Northern latitudes, when snow 
and frost chain the earth In their icy bonds for more 
than a third of the year, and when darkness throws 
Ids mantle over the body of Time, leaviug scarcely 
the venerable gentleman’s extremities to be illu¬ 
mined by daylight, how much of all this programme 
can the farmer get through with ? Care to the dumb 
animals which depend on him for their daily food, 
claims his first attention; the mid-day feeding fol¬ 
lows close on the chores of the morning, and the 
evening’s labors must begin early to avoid working 
in darkness. Then there are stormy days, and cold 
ones, too, when it is advisable to house one’s self by 
the fire, rather than encounter the severities of the 
weather. Considering all this, ii the farmer dis¬ 
penses with a “hired man,” what can lie accomplish 
aside from his necessary work of caring for stock ? 
Much of the farmer’s winter work, obviously, 
should be intellectual, consisting fsf reading, com¬ 
paring, investigating the various questions which 
arise in his culling, and iu laying plans for the future. 
Nature seems to hint at this in the opportunity given 
by stormy days and long evenings. Rest the muscles 
aud toil with the brain, and in the summer the sin¬ 
ews will spring quicker and stronger to the Work, 
and, directed by higher Intelligence, will achieve 
wider and completer results. 
is the accompanying illustrations our re A rs will 
recognize two animals whose reputation f»r stub¬ 
bornness and endurance has passed into a proverb — 
the .Tack, and hi* hybrid relative, the Mule. As a 
beast of all work — a drudge on the far ms of the 
West, plantations of the South, ami roads and Canals 
of the whole country — the mule has become popu¬ 
lar. The recent civil war, in which the mule played 
a prominent part in army transportation, added to 
the reputation of this hardy, cheaply-kept and 
effective beast or draft and burden. Their powers 
of endurance, compared with the horse — the com¬ 
parative cheapness of their keeping,— their exemp¬ 
tion from most of the diseases pertaining to their 
more pretentions competitor, tha horse,—conspire 
to render the mule family a growing favorite with 
farmers, planters, teamsters, and canal forwarders. 
While In the South, last season, we saw many fine 
mule teams on plantations, the roads, in cities,— in¬ 
deed, almost everywhere that a beast for draft, or 
burden could be used, especially in the Carulinas, 
Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky,—and were sur¬ 
prised at the amount of labor they could perform, in 
proportion to their size, care and keep. Iu fact, 
small sized mules are universally preferred at the 
South, and consequently the larger sizes are sold 
in the cities, — principally north of Washington. 
The growing appreciation of the mule in various 
parts of the country is such that we make no apology 
for presenting a likeness of the “ Jack,” with his staid 
look of ruminating wisdom—and his lialf-progeuy, the. 
RURAL FARMERS’ CLUB 
Coal Ashes. 
“A Subscriber,” East Foultney, Vt.., desires to 
know the best use that can be made of coal ashes. 
Should they he applied in compost or otherwise? 
The value of coal ashes as a fertilizer in any form 
has never been satisfactorily settled. They have been 
applied us a top dressing for grass plats with marked 
success, inducing a vigorous, dark - green growth. 
Others have for some years added them to the com¬ 
post heap, sandwiching them with unfermented 
manures in the place of muck, aud, as many believe 
with the best results, as an absorbent. A small 
series of experiments will enable any farmer or gar¬ 
dener to determine the best use for coal ashes. 
Shingles nml Fence Boards. 
W. J. F., Perry, N. Y., asks if red oak is suita¬ 
ble for shingles, and whether chestnut will make 
good fence boards ? If one needs the shingles aud 
lias straight grained red oak it is better to make 
shingles from it and use Them, than to buy others. 
But cedar, pine, or good hemlock are preferable. 
Chestnut makes good fence boards if they are piled 
and thoroughly seasoned before lx;Lug nailed to the 
posts.. If put on green they will twist and curl, 
split and draw out the nails. This timber makes 
good sblugles, but they Will curl up some, and should 
be laid narrow to the weather, and the pitch of the 
roof should be not less than a quarter. Chestnut is 
harder than pine or hemlock, uud will wear longer, 
but it will also split easier. Sell the chestnut to the 
cabinet maker (what you do uot wish for posts or 
fence rails) and buy pine or hemlock. 
[Southern Editorial Correspondence of Moore’s Rural.] 
WHEAT CULTURE IN THE SOUTHWEST 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
In the neighborhood where the writer resides, 
wheat was sold immediately after harvest at from 
ninety cents to a dollar a bushel, but advanced 
rapidly in price as the crop passed, into the hands 
of millers and speculators, uutil it is now worth 
about $2.30 a bushel in Knoxville. In extensive 
communities where many farmers cannot read nor 
write, and where hardly one in a hundred of those 
able to read thinks it profitable to pay $3 a year 
for a weekly paper like the Rural, that will give 
information as to the market value of wheat, llouw 
provisions and other important staples, few con¬ 
sider the immense losses sustained by the pro¬ 
ducing classes as a direct or indirect punishment 
for needless and therefore discreditable ignorance. 
Had our fanners been properly posted in reference 
to New York and London markets, not a bushel of 
their wheat would have been sold below $2—saving 
an average of $1 a bushel clear profit. Two years 
ago, when the writer liret came upon this farm, 
forty mules were bought at an average of $50 a 
head, fed a couple of months and sold in au ad¬ 
joining State at an average of $150 a head. Trite 
Feediua Sulphur to Stock. 
“ F. F.,” Concord, O., writes; — “ I would like to 
ascertain through your columns in regard to feeding 
sulphur to cows, whether it is beneficial, especially 
during the spring. It, is a well known fact that all 
the horse aud cattle powders so extensively adver¬ 
tised are bastd upon this ingredient. I regard it as 
an unmitigated humbug to pay twenty-live eeuts 
for a package when half the investment would pur¬ 
chase several times the material,— a pretty good 
profit on the original purchase, to say the least. 
Have entirely heed young cattle from lice by simply 
feeding sulphur, it is, of course, an efficient blood 
cleanser, but how much or how little could be fed to 
advuutage is something in which I am not posted.” 
No sane man would be likely to dose himself 
with medicine when he is in good health. Why 
should be give it to his animals when they are •well 
aud thrifty? If they are lousy or ailing, let him 
resort to medicine, (good care and plenty of food arc 
generally the best,) aud give that kind, and as much 
of it, as experience proves will secure the best 
results. The doses must be graduated to the uui- 
mals and the disease. 
spring; quite an area of 
S hushes encroaching upon hie pasture 
which he might cut aud pile; a variety 
of trees that he might split into rails, 
when there was not much frost in the 
timber, and draw to the feuee that needs 
repair all the easier for the frost in the 
gouud. Looking round home, to see 
what might be done for the comfort of 
his household, he might happen to ob¬ 
serve that his fire-wood was engulfed in 
snow, after being drenched with rain , and 
all for the want of putting sticks, boards, 
aud shingles into the form, place and 
office of a “ wood-shed ,” so-eftlled. Per¬ 
haps his dwelling house would be the better for 
some tightening up. If he had leisure to look round 
a little, more he might find some sheep and calves 
eating their hay off the ground, not always frozen, for 
the want of suitable nicks; and then find them look¬ 
ing horribly diseou&ol&te because the wind, by a bold 
strategic movement, altogether uuiooked for by their 
SNVDER 
