JUNE 2 
345 
prices. Exclusive pasturage with sheep, beef 
or dairy cows, furnishes almost no steady aud 
remunerative daily employment for farm la¬ 
borers. It supports only a sparse population. 
It tends to seud our small farm owners, rent¬ 
ers and farm hands to the West, or into other 
employments, diminishes the rural population 
and permits churches and school-houses aud 
even farm-houses and hamlets to go to decay. 
And so, wherever the land is not too hilly or 
stony for cultivation, but is too clayey for 
wheat, fruits, clover, potatoes and successful 
rotation, there tile drainage comes in as an ab¬ 
solute boon. Year by year with little ex¬ 
pense but that for the tiles, the farmer cau 
drain five acres or so, and thus make a con¬ 
stantly increasing portion of his farm equal in 
wheat, clover and fruit-producing power to 
the higher-priced and more esteemed gravelly 
loams. 
Though I am not an enthusiast naturally, 
but rather am cautious and slow to adopt new 
things, I am thoroughly convinced of the 
above statement, both from observation and 
experiment. About five years ago I visited 
the famous farms of John Johnson and of his 
son-in-law, Robt. J. Swan, in Geneva, N. Y. 
Every one knows the remarkable results of 
drainage on John Johnson’s farm. He was the 
“father of drainage” in the United States, aud 
his success has been too often detailed to need 
repetition. The farm of Mr. Swan adjoins 
Mr. Johnson’s. It contains nearly 300 acres 
aud is of a stiff day, quite similar to my own 
and to many others in the exclusive dairy re¬ 
gions of Ohio. About 10 years before my visit 
he had bought the farm, none of it tile-drained, 
but all of it badly croj>-d ruined. or exhausted. 
His first wheat crop yielded him five bushels 
per acre—200 bushels from 40 acres. He re¬ 
solved to tile-drain the whole except the partly 
wooded permanent pasture. Having the neces¬ 
sary capital, he completed the work iu about 
two years, laying the tiles 33 feet apart, 2% 
feet deep, and at an average cost of about $22 
per acre. When I was there he had just 
thrashed his wheat for that year, and I saw 
the great bins of it—2,200 bushels of as fine 
wheat as over was seen, grown on 50 acres, 
making an average of 44 bushels per acre, or 
double the cost per acre of the drainage, for 
tl at single crop. His other crops in the rota¬ 
tion-corn, oats, barley, clover and fruit— 
wore of like excellence, and were rendered 
possible on his soil only by tilo-dramage, fol¬ 
lowed by the best management and the best 
fanning. 
My own first experiment iu "burying crock¬ 
ery” was some 11 years ago, when I laid a 
large drain through a certain swale, or hol¬ 
low on my farm, that was always wet long 
after the rest of the field was dry enough to 
plow. At once it became dry in the Spring 
the earliest of any part of the field, and fur 
the most, productive. The remainder of the 
field I did not drain until forced by repeated 
failures either to drain it or seed it to per¬ 
manent meadow. One year I had 11 acres of 
it iu potatoes and they were soaked to death, 
though the surface was quite rolling. This 
left the ground so sodden and heavy aud 
lumpy that the Hungarian Grass sown the 
next season amounted to little. So 1 drained 
it. 33 foot apart and 2'^ feet deep, at a total 
cost of $23 per acre and manured with 15 
tons per acre of average stable mauure, and 
drilled 10 acres with Clawson wheat. It 
yielded !•>' . bushels per acre by the certified 
statements of the thrasher aud surveyor, 
lake Mr. Swan’s wheat, that one crop paid 
twice the cost of drainage per acre. 
Of coarse, these are exceptionally large 
yields, and exceptionally quick returns for 
the entire interior of the ticking was evenly 
lined with plush resembling the fur of a mole. 
Now this was .submitted to the “ardent en¬ 
tomologist" and “author” who found “it was 
the work of an insect.” The pillows had been 
stuffed with common hens’ feathers. The in¬ 
sect had stripped the finer parts from the 
feathers and "glued or otherwise fastened 
them to the pillow-tick.” “If these were at¬ 
tached,” the editorial goes on, “one at a time, 
the industry displayed in the work is most 
wonderful. The microscope shows that each 
hair-like fragment is fixed by its larger end or 
base, just as it was attached to the feather. 
More than this, they appear to be lapped over 
each other in one direction only. If the sur¬ 
face be smoothed in one direction, the fibers 
all lie flat; but if the motion of the fingers is 
made the other way, the surface is at once 
that every additional movement would an¬ 
chor it firmer. The remarkable thing about 
the present case is that the felting should be 
so beautifully regular.” 
Several years ago, this same Mr. Fuller 
could not mention Prof. Riley’s name without 
a strong word of praise After an editorial 
association, however, upon the American En¬ 
tomologist, of a few months, he must have 
taken occasion to change his mind, as we have 
not seen that he has mentioned Prof. Riley's 
name since in the several agricultural columns 
of the N. Y. Sim of which he is the editor, 
and where in old times Prof. R's name was 
so often lovingly alluded to. 
We like to see justice done to whom justice 
is due, and that is just why we have brought 
this, in one sense, trifling matter so promin¬ 
ently before our readers, as from past exper- 
apart in the drill is not nearly close enough, 
especially for the dwarfish early sorts. If 
so far apart, the stalks grow too large and 
tough to he readily eaten by the stock 
soiled. The kernels should be dropped in the 
drill not to exceed two inches apart. The 
stalks then grow up only about a half to thrtfe- 
quartei's of an inch in diameter, and are so 
sweet and tender that cattle will greedily de¬ 
vour them to the end of their butts. The 
stalks should not he cut till well tasseled, and 
they will be the more nutritious if left till 
they silk, or till the grain of the eai-s is in the 
milk. We cannot depend upon eveiy kernel 
of corn planted to germinate, and when I fear 
any failure as to this, I drop them not over 
an inch apart in the drill. A. B. Allen. 
‘Best Way to Make Butter.— There is no 
special mode of making butter which is better 
under all circumstances than every other, 
says L. B. Arnold (now our first dairy authori¬ 
ty) in the New York Tribune. What is best 
for one may not be best for another. The 
method pursued by an inquiring friend who 
lowers his milk in deep and narrow vessels 
into water in his well, with a temperature of 
50®, for 36 hours, may lie, and probably is. 
best for him with a small dairy, since he makes 
an article that brings four or five cents a 
pound above other dairy butter in his neigh¬ 
borhood, but such a practice could not be fol¬ 
lowed in a large creamery with any conven- 
inence or profit; besides, everybody cannot 
provide himself with such a well. 
The very finest butter is made by setting 
shallow in a pure and only moderately cool 
air, yet this method is not best for general use. 
because it calls for too much room, too much 
labor, and too much time and expense, to be 
acceptable or profitable for those who have 
much milk to handle. Though the butter 
might be very choice, it would be too expen¬ 
sive to compete with butter nearly as good, 
but made with out-quarter of the labor and 
expense and in half the time. 
The Elgin Creamery buys the milk of 800 
to 1.000 cows from large dairies near the city. 
The best mode in such a case is to set the milk 
in large vats and coo] vigorously with iced 
water to hurry the separation of the cream 
and do it with the least expense, but in new 
and sparsely settled localities it is better to 
cream the milk at the farm in small vessels, 
with only such refrigeration as the farm af¬ 
fords, and to send only cream to the factory. 
Though sudden changes in milk, cream or 
butter are not conducive to the highest qual¬ 
ity or longest keeping, yet rapid refrigeration, 
as a rule, brings the best practical results, be¬ 
cause it makes a more perfect separation of 
cream than slow cooling, aud saves time and 
expense in working, aud thus reduces cost. 
For those who relish the peculiarly fresh 
acid taste of a little buttermilk in their new 
butter, unwashed butter will be preferred 
while it is new. As soon, however, as the but¬ 
ter-milk which adheres to it has had time to 
change—which it will do in about 48 hours in 
warm weather—its fresh taste disappears and it 
begins at first to be stale, then strong, and 
finally rancid and decidedly objectionable. 
If the working is so thorough as to practically 
remove all of the buttermilk, the increased 
amount of violence breaks the grain of the 
butter, and this is about as bad as buttermilk 
to injure Its keeping, so that worked butter is 
short-lived according to the amount of work¬ 
ing done to it, or the quantity of buttermilk 
left in it. 
Butter which is well washed in good water, 
especially when* it is gathered in pellets or 
granules instead of in u mass, has no taste of 
buttermilk, aud for this reason those who 
prefer that flavor do uot admire it so much 
as unwashed butter. Niue out of every ten 
persons, however, prefer the pure, distinct and 
full flavor of butter unadulterated with but¬ 
termilk or disguised with excessive salt, and 
this flavor is only obtained by washing even- 
particle of buttermilk from it and avoiding 
the working which must follow when washing 
isomitted. 
S/We 3ttr« 
View of Frame, 
roughened, just like fur when stroked the 
wrong way. Numerous small, black oval beet¬ 
les, about one-twelfth of an iuch loug, were 
found in the pillows, aud these must have 
been the workmen in tins strange, decorative 
art. Mr. Fuller makes out the inseet to be 
Aftagenus megatoma, a near relative of the 
insects which are so destructive to stuffed 
specimens of all kinds that they are known as 
“Museum Pests.” “What was the object of 
the insect f* will naturally be asked. Thus far 
this is a mystery. That it thus destroyed 
the feathers is not so strange, but that 
it should use the fragments to construct 
a fabric (if we can so call it), is a puzzle. 
Insects often do a great deal of work in pro¬ 
viding for their progeny, but there is nothing 
to indicate that this is for such a purpose, If 
these insects could lie induced to do this as a 
regular business, aud convert common feathers 
into beautiful plush, it would be a uew in¬ 
dustry.” 
Now, a few weeks prior to last October, Mrs. 
or Mr. Hales sent a specimen of this “plushed’ 
pillow-case to Professor C. V. Riley, who rc- 
Fig. 217. 
ience and observation we have no idea that it 
is to be looked for either from the Flower-pot 
M. B. C. A. A. or the “ ardent entomologist 
and author.” 
My Rural Niagara Grape seeds wore soak¬ 
ed in warm water four days and were then 
put iu a flower-pot, kept in a window. I have 
now 26 nice plants growing—all in less than 
four weeks. w, J. C. 
Decatur, Iowa, May 9. 
I put my Niagara Grape seeds to soak in 
warm water on March 21, and was called sud 
denly from home, so the seeds remained in the 
water until April 9, when I planted them in a 
a box of mellow soil and set it in the window iu 
the kitchen; iu 1? days my first vine came 
through and now I have 33 vines, all doing well 
Okernos, Mich., May 14. V. W. Hoag. 
//« 
Cfitomoloiiical 
Cross Section of Barn 
plied through our columns’os noted above, 
giving the name of the beetle. He found no 
“ mystery” about it and ascribes the “felting” 
merely to the result of daily shaking the pil¬ 
lows. Prof. Riley says; “An examination 
shows that the short, downy particles of 
the beard of the feathers are all in¬ 
serted by their basal euds; and the explana¬ 
tion of the felting is, of course, simple enough 
when the barbed nature of these fine feathers 
is remembered, the barbs all directed towards 
the apex. The beetles in feeding had cut up 
all the fiuer purts of the beard or vaue and 
devoured the coarser and more pithy portions 
of the stem. In the regular shakiug of the 
pillow each of the minute particles of the 
beai*d, whenever caught iu the cotton fabric 
by its base, became anchored in such a way 
STRANGE WORK WITH A PILLOW" (!) 
Strange Indeed! 
W (•: like the way that people appropriate 
credit that belongs to others. Iu the Flower¬ 
pot Monthly Broadway Companion for June, 
p. 274, Mr. A. R Fuller, “author of u Small 
1'Yuit Cultiirist and other works” aud also “an 
ardent entomologist,” brings to the notice of 
the Editor a remarkable example of insect 
industry. The example is precisely that given 
in the Rural of Oct. 14 of last year, p. 099. 
Mrs. Ilalos, of Ridgewood, N. J., observed that 
a pair of her feather pillows were becoming 
dull and losing their elasticity. When the 
pillow eases were emptied it was found that 
the feathers were all divested of the plume 
and that the naked quills only remained, while 
Hereford Cattle for Crossing.— A cele¬ 
brated breeder of Herefords in England, ac¬ 
cording to the London Live Stock Journal, 
recently addressed the following .picries to a 
gentlemen who had tried the cross of a Here¬ 
ford bull on Short-horn dairy cows for several 
years aud received the appended answers:_ 
1 . Of calves got by a Short-horn bull or by 
a Hereford bull, which fatten the quickest, 
and which are the most valuable if sold fat to 
butcher* 
Ans.—I consider those got by a Hereford bull. 
2 . Of heifers got by a Short-horn or Here- 
Falkland, Cauada., May 14. 
CLOSE CORN PLANTING FOR FODDER 
In a late Rural, speaking of planting corn 
for fodder, the writer says, “Drop three seeds 
to the foot, or even closer,” etc. Four inches 
