PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT.” 
doubted that the fodder crops of the British Islands 
are very much reduced below the average, and this 
is a more serious matter than a lack of wheat. 
When we survey the facts which will determine 
the value of farm produce in our own country, we 
cannot perceive a prospect of much if any depres¬ 
sion from the prices of the past year. Grant that 
we have gathered a larger harvest of wheat this 
year than ever before (which is by no means cer¬ 
tain,) and we have as an off-set, first, that we need 
a great many millions of bushels more, in the aggre¬ 
gate to give the same amount per head as formerly 
to our Increased population; second, there is little 
surplus in the country, and the new stock must be 
broached at once; and, third, a larger proportion 
than usual will be of inferior quality, owiug to the 
shrinkage caused by premature ripening. In view 
of these facts we can see no reason for much if any 
depression of prices for first-class wheat. The 
market for the current crop of barley and oats 
opens with fair x>rice6. The malsters are anxious 
to secure an early supply, as their present stock is 
short, and are disposed to pay liberally. Oats and 
corn, as well as hay, will be favorably affected by a 
foreign demand for fodder. 
MOOKE’S RURAL NEW YORKER 
AN ORIGINAL WEEKLY 
Agricultural, Literary and Family Newspaper, 
CONDUCTED BY D. D. T. MOORE, 
(PUBLISHES AND PROPRIETOR,) 
With a Corps of Able Associates and Contributors 
G. F. WILCOX AND A. A. HOPKINS. Associate Editors. 
HON. HENRY S. RANDALL, LL. D., 
Editor of the Department of Sheep Husbandry. 
Db. DANIEL LEE, Southern Corresponding Editor. 
HIRAM HUMPHREY and REUBEN D. JONES, 
Assistant and Commercial Editors. 
Terms, in Advance —Three Dollars a Year:— Five 
copies for fi4 : Seven, and one free to Club Agent., for $19 1 
Ten, and one free, for $25— only $2.50 per copy. As we pre¬ 
pay American postage, $2.TO is the lowest Club rate to Canada 
and $3.50 to Europe. The best way to remit Is by Draft or 
Post-Office Money Order,-and all Drafts and Orders made 
payable to the Publisher mat bb mailed at bis rise. 
THE OLD FOGY FARMER’S POULTRY 
encc to the Rinderpest or cattle disease, which then 
threatened to invade this and the adjoining States, 
met at Albany on a summons from the Governor, on 
the 17th inst,, and proceeded to adopt Banitary meas¬ 
ures with reference to diseased stock whether sta¬ 
tionary or in transit. The Commission is composed 
of M. M. Patrick, J. Stanton Gould and Lewis F. 
Allen. The measures agreed upon comprise the 
stoppage of all vehicles, on which stock is trans¬ 
ported, at the most convenient points, without the 
State, or immediately after entering it, for the pur¬ 
pose of inspection. If diseased cattle are found or 
have been on snch vehicles, the animals are to he 
removed and a thorough process of disinfection 
perfomed, diseased 6tock sepat^ied from the healthy, 
and, if past cure, to be killed and tried up or deeply 
buried. The Assistant Commissioners are to trav¬ 
erse the State in pursuance ot^ie purpose of their 
cure the deep wound inflicted on Southern interests 
by the extinction of the “ peculiar institution.” In 
their progress westward, European ideas have de¬ 
stroyed slavery in the Southern States. With a 
plenty of grass and little planting, Europe has small 
use for slaves, black or white. Cover the Planting 
States with tbe Bame grass, and negro labor will 
not he worth ten cents a day, for there will be 
white people enough to do all the work of reseed¬ 
ing, fencing and taking care of stock. 
A sure income from land, and that steadily im¬ 
proving in all the elements of human food, is what 
we need. The natural forces that form a good, firm 
sod where none existed before, are adequate to give 
us richer land than we now have, and a satisfactory 
income. In one sense a growing turf may be said 
to create manure j for it fixes in the soil elements 
of fertility that would otherwise floW in water down 
PROFESSOR GAMGEE’S REPORT. 
Prof. Gamgbe has investigated the Texas cattle 
disease now causing so much trouble and loss, and 
made a report, of which we give a summary. Of the 
symptoms manifested by the diseased animals, Prof. 
G. says: — “ The general aspect of the sick ox or cow 
is peculiar. With drooping head, arched hack, hol¬ 
low flanks, dull looking or staring coat, there is an 
appearance of great dejection. The pulse is frequent, 
sometimes full, and at others thready; during the 
latter stages of the disease it is so frequent and small 
as not to be easily taken at the jaw. The secretions 
are checked with the exceptions of some glary mu¬ 
cous from the nose; and very high colored urine, 
which is often retained in great abundance and for 
some length of time in tdje over-distended bladder. 
The secretion of milk is suspended in cows from the 
earliest stages. There is costiveneBB, but this is 
Late English journals remark at great length on 
the severity of the drouth in Great Britain and por¬ 
tions of the Continent, and its influence on the 
farm productions of those countries. The dry term 
commenced in England on the 80th of May, and 
has prevailed without any effective amelioration 
for a period of more than two months. As a con¬ 
sequence, pasturage is dried up to a great extent, 
the growth of grasB in the meadows stinted, root 
crops are cut short fully one-half, while the wheat 
harvest was precipitated fully two weeks as com¬ 
pared with ordinary years. Among the results ad¬ 
verse already produced is the premature transfer of 
cattle and sheep from the farms where they were 
being fattened to the shambles in a lean 3tate, in¬ 
volving a serious loss to the owners, whose princi¬ 
pal profits result from feeding after the animals 
have attained a suitable age for being slaughtered. 
The amount of stock which farms ordinarily carry 
must necessarily be diminished. A partial set-off 
to this gloomy state of affairs is the early harvest 
and the generally fine condition in which the grain 
has been secured. As to the character and com¬ 
mercial value of the wheat, barley, oats and hay 
crops, the London papers present somewhat variant 
views. 
The Mark Lane Express takes rather a gloomy 
view of the matter—conceding about an average 
crop of wheat on the best soils, but one much be¬ 
low this on the lighter ones —making an uncom¬ 
fortable diminution on the aggregate yield. As a 
result it predicts a higher ruling rate during the 
present than the past season. Advices from France 
to the same paper say that “ the French wheat crop 
is very variable. In the southern, and some or the 
central and western departments, they do not cal¬ 
culate on more than two-thirds of an average, while 
on the well-cultivated lands of the north they have 
a full one. But it will be still necessary to import 
a considerable amount to meet the French con¬ 
sumption.” 
Taking a Eomewhat different view, the London 
Daily News says: — ‘'Mark Lane is always very- 
ready to sympathize with the gloomy anticipations 
of the farmers, though now and then it gets a sud¬ 
den panic when it finds the prospects to be better 
than it had speculated upon. But there is some¬ 
thing better to judge by now than speculations. 
The corn is everywhere being carried three weeks 
earlier than usual from the fields, and though far¬ 
mers are too busy, with all their crops ripened at 
once, to send much corn to market, the new wheat 
has made its appearance there and haB produced an¬ 
other panic. It is spoken of as magnificently 
ripened, as remarkably heavy — 62 to 00 lbs. to the 
bushel —bard, dry, and with but little bran, every¬ 
thing that the miller, the baker and the housewife 
can desire. Nor can there be any reason to believe 
that any great deficiency in quantity accompanies 
this unusual quality.” A fall in price in one week 
of from four to six shillings per quarter is cited in 
justification of this hopeful view. 
If the anticipated deficit here predicted is sus¬ 
tained by the results of the harvest, it is safe to 
assume that the United States will be called upon 
to make a portion of it good. But the most singu¬ 
lar result of the drouth in England is the draft it is 
already making on this country for hay. The New 
York Tribune of the 11th states that five steamers 
had departed for England, wilhin a week, laden 
with hay, an article rarely sent abroad from this 
country, except occasionally to the Islands. It i& 
added that the steamers for a fortnight ahead are 
engaged for all they can carry out, and it is assumed 
that large fleetB of sailing vessels will follow, 
freighted with the same commodity. Should this 
demand continue for any considerable time it can 
hardly fail to appreciate the price of hay here, and 
in the Dominions of Ontario and Quebec also. Ad¬ 
vices from England also state that hay brought 
from fifty to sixty dollars per ton in the interior 
towards the last of July. The potato crop is seri¬ 
ously injured, and the root crop is reduced two- 
thirds. Oats, barley and beans are below an aver¬ 
age. This condition of things will have some effect 
on the prices of our own products. Although the 
adverse effects of a drouth are generally over 
i$3.00 PER YEAS, 
i CKms, ) single Copy, Six Cents. 
ROCHESTER, N. Y„ AND NEW YORK CITY. 
nccircc [82 Buffalo St«« Boo 
f 4 i Park Bow, New ork. 
(OL XIX. NO. 35.} 
FOR THE WEEK ENDING SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, I860. 
i WHOLE NO. 971. 
DOWN IN THE JERSEYS. 
estimated while it is prevalilintr, jet it cannot he 
readily overcome by mccLcine, and even by ?i 
diet. The breathing is usually freqwm am! some 
times planting. The temperature of i_. body rises 
to 107 degrees, 1 OS degrees and 109 deg.- Fatrn n- 
heit, and nothing is more remarkable than the early 
and very marked elevation of animal heat. Oi ah 
the symptoms none are more remarkable tr.r . U 
trembliDg and twitching3 of muscles and tie un¬ 
steady gait of the affected animals. In the advanced 
stages of the disease, when the ox or cow lies down, 
there is difficulty in rising from partial paralysis of 
the hind quarters; and the first indication of this 
interference with the functions of the hind limbs is 
their being drawn slightly under the belly, and the 
fetlock joints slightly bent as in other acute diseases 
of cattle. But the partial paralysis sometimes in¬ 
volves the fore-legs, and we have noticed what 
physiologists would call defective co-ordination of 
movement from implication of the lesser brain in 
the disease. We have been told of some patients 
manifesting signs of delirium. The animals die 
usually iD from three days to a week. There may 
he exceptions to this rule, as we have heard of ani¬ 
mals which appeared well on the one day and died 
on the next; but such cases are rare, and the early 
symptoms of the disease had been probably over¬ 
looked.” 
The pathological appearances after death show no 
diseaee of the lungs, but the heart and its covering 
indicate decided blood changes. The action of an 
irritant poison is apparent in the signs presented by 
the stomach and intestines. The 6pleen is twice its 
natural size and otherwise changed from a healthy 
app'earance. The kidneys sometimes contain in 
their cavities bloody urine, and the bladder is dis¬ 
tended with the same bloody fluid. The malady 
follows the track of the Texan cattle, yet they are 
not subject to it; nor is the disease communicated 
Irom one animal to another by proximity and actual 
contact. 
The Professor’s theory of the origin of the disease 
is, that “about spring time and early summer, in all 
probability, the Texan cattle eat, as onr own do in 
some parts of Scotland, the young, succulent shoots 
of peculiar trees, highly charged with astringent prin¬ 
ciples. On unbroken ground, highly charged with 
moisture, and adjoining wood lands, there are, as 
the hot weather Bets in, many thingB sprouting, 
which animals will not touch later in the season; 
and in the motte of Texas there is the live oak which 
growB in the Gulf States, where indeed cattle are 
reared which have been known in times past to dis¬ 
seminate this dis order, for the cattle of Florida are 
as dangerous norib of a certain line, as the steers of 
Texas. From this peculiar feed, therefore, the ani¬ 
mals get their systems impregnated with materials 
which do not destroy the stock accustomed to a 
special living in a given latitude, hut which being 
thrown off in the urine and the excrement, induce 
the “ black water,” or peculiar form of “enzootic 
luematuria,” which is now killing the cattle of thi6 
and adjeining States." 
As a means for arresting the epidemic he suggests 
that Texan cattle be kept for a time on the frontier 
and through the action of special food and medicines 
the excreta which they deposit be disinfected. He 
does not deem the flesh or milk of the Texan cattle 
affected by the malady or in any degree rendered 
unwholesome for humau use. 
ACTION OF THE NEW YORK STATE COMMISSION. 
The New York State Commissioners appointed in 
1 pursuance of Chapter 740, Laws of 1806, with refer- 
the cattle disease shall render w^r'yeuce necessary. 
The powers of the Assistant (Ab ssionera are am- 
ji. ■ t h c purpose of inspectingAock and stockyards 
an v V i a the State; to cau» the destruction of 
pi;. : ■ due proof of disenlc, and a reasonable 
eerraia’.y hat a cure is impracticable. Also, to 
cause all infected places to be thoroughly purified 
■ veil a.- the garments or persons having the charge 
v.i< infected stock. The disinfectants, mainly 
. cl: t:.I ax 'L, are carbolic acid, the various prepara¬ 
tions of chlorine, and the sulphates. Dr. John 
Swinburne, Health Officer of the Port of New 
York, has been intrusted with a general sanitary 
supervision of the State, and will traverse it in 
pursuance of his appointment, 
- <«■>• »<-♦ - 
GRASS CULTURE IN THE SOUTHWEST. 
NUMBER TWO, 
The writer has generally been successful in seed¬ 
ing com land to grass and clover by sowing seed in 
June or July, immediately after the last working of 
the crop. The soil is fresh and loose from the use 
of the harrow, plow or horse hoe, and the small 
seeds need no covering—the first rain moving earth 
enough to cover them. The s'aade of large com 
protects the young grass or clover from the heat of 
a summer sun. Last year, howeier, a severe drouth 
in antumnjkilled some forty or fifty acres of grass 
put in as described,’ and I shall tlis year delay seed¬ 
ing till fall, plow and harrow after the corn is har¬ 
vested and before sowing grass seed. We are so 
much in the habit of raibing cam in this section 
that it is hard to leave off before a field is badly 
washed and worn, and made too poor to gYow tim¬ 
othy or meadow foxtail (Alopecunis pratentUt) to any 
profit. 
The mistake of having too large a part of one’s 
farm in tillage is by no means United to the South¬ 
ern and Southwestern States. The Western, Mid¬ 
dle and Northern furnish man; instances of this 
error. In place of depleting a new farm by raising 
corn and other grain for years bifore Beeding, it is 
better to start with grass and clo'.er, and give them 
the full strength of the virgin soil You can make 
a much better sod in this way, ant, in the long run, 
obtain a better return on the investment. Culti¬ 
vated in com nearly all the farmin' lands south and 
west of Baltimore wash badly; uni as they are gen¬ 
erally cheap, it is best to put thenin grass when the 
timber is first removed. In a fev years the roots 
of trees will be partly rotten and beak easily, (com¬ 
paratively speaking, ) while the tirf will at once 
check washing and fertilize the ground for com or 
wheat, in after tillage. 
Grass may he converted into fa.m stock, or sold 
as hay, and in either bring more money than the 
land will produce in grain, and vith far less labor. 
The South has thus far found no nbsritute for slave 
labor; and the owners of the soi must raise plants, 
like the perennial grasses, that will yield them a 
living with very little human foil. Five hundred 
acres in grass will demand no more work than fifty 
acres in cotton, and will give a 6urer return in 
horses, mules, wool, butter, chiese or beef, Any 
land that will produce com or ;*ats will pay quite 
as well set in grass anywhere n the South. Let 
this fact be generally known, aid many a ruined 
and discouraged planter will lugin to have some 
hope in the future, and try o make a green, 
fruitful and happy home where now all is gloom, 
poverty and desolation. The European perennial 
grasses are perhaps the only remedies which can 
tv ‘•ojc e-eu,, ur nutu, uu in gas iniri uy. deeper ocean, 
the atmosphere. We greatly need/some power that 
will not denude our fields, but accumulate in them, 
for onr benefit, the precise things which, when or¬ 
ganized, make our daily bread. Of all known plants, 
the European grasses tlo this most efficiently for the 
taste, habits and convenience of the white race. In 
a word, if this race is to live in the sunny South, 
and not abandon the country to the African race, it 
must cultivate the white man’s grasses, and profit 
by their peculiar and Indispensable advantages. 
This is no new doctrine with the writer. He 
taught it for years before slavery was abolished, 
both in the University, and out of It through the 
Southern press. Truth cannot change; and if “ all 
flesh iB grass,” why not Inquire carefully into the 
best ways and means of covering several hundred 
million acres of our now unproductive lands with 
the most profitable herbage? 
There is a great deal of land in the United States 
that haB been more or less impoverished, which is 
not likely to recover what it has lost by manure 
applied directly to the soil. Restitution must be 
made indirectly or not at all. My way is to take 
the water that comes from limestone •springs at the 
base of Bay’s Mountain and with it irrigate a pasture 
and meadow, and make at least two blades of grass 
grow where one grew before. This is a small mat¬ 
ter, hut it illustrates a principle of wide applica¬ 
tion. It converts into milk, wool, the flesh of 
horses, mules, cattle, hogs, and man himself, ele¬ 
ments in running water that would otherwise fall 
into the ocean. This practice is is available in New 
York, New England and Illinois as on the French 
Broad River in Tennessee. It makes not only grass 
but rich manure where none existed before. Is not 
this one way to recuperate a worn-out farm ? 
Knox Co., Tenn. D. Lee. 
DEEP OR SHALLOW P 
The subject of plowing is still under discussion 
in some of our exchanges—the majority siding with 
the deep furrow, an occasional one with the shallow. 
There is, however, a pretty general acquiescense in 
the assumption that, with nnderdrainuge, deep 
plowing is beneficial. Now the fact is that a deep 
stirring of the soil is a species of underdraining as 
it affords the surplus water a chance to recede fur¬ 
ther from the surface and the roots of the plants 
thun shallow plowing would do. But, where the 
subsoil is of a tenacious character, arresting the 
water in its downward course, underdraining and 
deep plowing should go together. The immediate 
results may not meet expectation, but a second crop 
will furnish proof of improvement, and succeeding 
ones much more striking attestations of the wisdom 
which combined under drainage and deep tillage. 
Ample stores ol vegetable life are hid away in the 
earth, but to awaken them to energetic and pro¬ 
longed action, the scratching process must give 
place to a more profound and invigorating one. 
By way of corroboration of this, if any is needed, 
we quote a remark recently made by A. S. Fuller, 
at a meeting of the New York Farmers’ Club. He 
said“ I will report a little experiment I have 
made Bince we have discussed the depth to which 
the ground should be stirred. I have broken up a 
gravelly hill of moderate fertility, and put corn on 
it. I told my men to take a narrow belt and spade 
it twenty inches or two feet deep. They did so, but 
put on no more manure than on the rest. Now 
what is the difference? Yon can see that belt for 
hall a mile; the com is twice as big." 
Tub wise men who concentrate the rayB of agri¬ 
cultural knowledge at the Farmers’ Club, and those 
who radiate them through the pages of the ponder¬ 
ous weekly press, took it into their heads to lay 
down a general rule in regard to deep or shallow 
plowing. Some of them went so far In their be¬ 
nevolent hearts as to invent a plow which would 
revolutionize the agriculture of the world by ena¬ 
bling the farmere to Btir the earth to fabulous 
depths. Even that excellent farmer, “ philosopher 
and friend,” Greeley, grew enthusiastic over it, 
and proclaimed that with this plow a man could 
double his acres, without increasing the area of his 
farm, simply by reaching down into his subsoil. 
Some Friends down in Southwestern Jersey, who 
thought they knew something about farming by 
practical operation, took issue with the wisdom of 
the Club, and insisted that a state of facts might 
exist whereby a system of deep tillage would be 
both unremunerative and improper. The contro¬ 
versy ended by the Friends asking the Club to send 
down a committee and they would take them about 
that section of the country, and submit to their 
judgment. I think the shrewd Friends wanted to 
do a quiet little bragging without seeming to exalt 
the horn of their worldly mindeduess. 
Dr. Trimble and Dr. Smith were made the skel¬ 
etons of a committee, with power to fill it up to 
comely proportions, and go down to Bee the coun¬ 
try and make a report. At the last moment Mr, 
Todd, the Ag’l Reporter of the TlmeB, was prevented 
from going by Bickness in his family, and to oblige 
him 1 was substituted, and that is how I came to be 
in the Jerseys. 
We passed through the State to Philadelphia, and 
thence on the east side of the Delaware River down 
to Salem, in Salem Co., and in the 8. W. angle of 
the State. The country along the route between 
the two cities is little else than a suburb, either to 
the one or the other, and a succession of villages, 
large towns and villas, and generally highly culti¬ 
vated farms. The general characteristics of the. soil 
—a sandy loam —make it very desirable for garden¬ 
ing purposes, and hence Jersey may be considered 
a sort of truck patch and fruit garden for the supply 
of the population on each side and in its territory. 
With such advantages for profitable culture, it is 
marvelous that there is yet so large a breadth of 
land in a wild state; and that people should be 
constantly wandering off' to the Rocky Mountains 
when cheap lands can be bought so near a never- 
failing market. There are some ridges of fair tim¬ 
ber, but generally the lands, though sandy, axe more 
or less marshy, but excellent for cranberries, and 
covered with a dense growth of scrub oak and pine. 
It usually costs about 815 per acre over the value 
of the timber to get the land into condition for the 
first crop, if of grain or grass, less when planted to 
small fruits, if the timber or scrub be cut when in 
full foliage. 
We were met at the depot by some Friends who 
bestowed us among the families of the burgh. I 
fell to the share of Mr. J. Ingham, and have to 
thank him and his excellent family for the most 
courteous attentions while under their tool. 
The next day we were taken into carriages and 
driven over the surrounding country, and to several 
farms where shallow plowing had been practiced for 
many years. They call from four to six inches shal¬ 
low— their average is about four. Though the sea¬ 
son was both backward and dry they had made good 
harvests, and I was much astonished to see the evi¬ 
dences, in large and numerous stacks and a heavy 
stubble, of crops of wheat, oats and rye that would 
have done no discredit to the wheat lands of West¬ 
ern New York. The clover would compare favor¬ 
ably with the best I have seen in that favored region. 
The 3oil is a loamy alluvion resting on an ocean 
drift; the surface slightly undulating, and requir¬ 
ing draining only in the bottoms bordering streams. 
On the bottoms where the tide overflows are some 
fine red-top or hertls-grass meadows, which are pro¬ 
tected by embankments. These meadows are a great 
source of profit to the owners, as more than one-half 
of all the red-top seed raised in the Union is grown 
here. Those who have these meadows generally 
keep cattle. • 
The course of farming now usually adopted, after 
more than one hundred years’ experience, is wheat, 
clover, corn, oats, rye or wheat, followed by clover 
again. The first crop of clover is cut for hay, fol¬ 
lowed by a cTop for 3eed, then pastured by sheep. 
Sheep are usually bought in October, the ewes then 
stinted to the ram, and kept In good condition; 
iambs sold as soon as the batcher will take them, 
and the ewes follow as 30on as fed up to marketable 
condition. This is their favorite course, and on this 
they increase the fertility of their soil and grow rich. 
I saw a portable steam engine driving a threshing 
machine at a group of stacks, and understood that 
it is generally used. 
My impression is that I have seen no portion of 
the country where a system of farming, based upon 
clover, can be so profitably studied as in Salem Co., 
and around Salem City. It has been longer and 
more persistently practiced than in the winter wheat 
region of Western New York, and presents much 
the same results—highly cultivated farms, elegant 
buildings, and a refined and Intelligent society. In 
such a soil as theirs deep plowing is not desirable, 
because they get the immediate advantages of their 
clover sod, and the soli does not require the amelior¬ 
ating influences of deeper culture. 
I will leave my visit to the dairy region around 
Philadelphia, in Delaware Co., for another paper. 
August, 1868. 
