42 
THE CULTIVATOR 
Feb. 
of order, may, by failing at a critical period, derange 
the whole machinery of the farm, at great loss, and 
requiring a long time to restore. A badly made horse- 
rake once broke, by which delay the rain came on five 
acres of dried hay, before it could be drawn in, lessen¬ 
ing its value two dollars on the ton, adding several 
more days’ labor to spreading and drying it a second 
time, and delaying the workmen so that an adjoining 
wheatfield was not harvested and housed till a long rain 
produced sprouting in the grain, and the whole delay, 
first and last, prevented the owner from preparing his 
wheat ground in time for early autumn sowing, by 
which he lost fifty dollars by estimate the following 
summer, through the attacks of the wheat-midge. 
This was almost as disastrous as Dr. Franklin’s illus¬ 
tration of neglect—“ For want of a nail the shoe was 
lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of 
a horse the rider was lost.” 
In planning the work of the year, it is advisable that 
provision be made for trying experiments. Not costly 
ones, but those which are simple and easily tried, and 
which determine important questions. We have known 
farmers to work from guessing , on a single subject for 
twenty years, where results would vary profits hun¬ 
dreds of dollars on the long run, and where the ques¬ 
tion of profit might have been determined with less than 
one day’s labor. There are now many questions on 
which cultivators continue to dispute, without resorting 
to practical tests, but which a proper entry in the 
memorandum-book already described, would enable 
any cultivator easily to settle — as for example, thick 
and thin seeding of grass and grain ; deep and shallow 
planting; late and early mowing; comparative pro¬ 
ducts of corn in hills and drills, and the same of pota¬ 
toes ; the value of frequent (weekly or daily) cultiva¬ 
tion of corn by horse power ; depth of burying manure ; 
comparative profit of selling grain or the animal fat¬ 
tened on it, &c. In all investigations of the kind, a 
convenient platform-scale, by assisting in the settle¬ 
ment of the various questions constantly occurring in 
the feeding and management of animals, would soon 
repay its cost. 
Millet—Hungarian Grass. 
Millet, under the name of Hungarian Grass, as ex¬ 
plained in our last paper, seems to have been pretty 
extensively tried in Iowa the past season. A corres¬ 
pondent of the Prairie Farmer, Mr. Philips of Butler 
co., states that the premium acre at the last fair of that 
county, yielded eight tons and two hundred pounds of 
well cured hay. This grew on fresh hazel-brush land. 
Other competitors came within a few hundred pounds 
of this weight. “ The average produce,” says Mr. P., 
“ on our prairie lands, is about five tons per acre. This 
grass is an annual, cultivated pretty much as oats, 
though somewhat later. Any time in May it does well 
here. One-third of a bushel per acre is about the 
proper quantity, covered very shallow, and harvested 
when the blades and head begin to turn yellow.” 
Among the recommendations which have been al¬ 
leged in favor of cultivating this variety of millet, we 
have noted the following : 1. The season for sowing 
the seed is a comparatively leisure one, being later 
than that for barley, oats, spring wheat, &c. 2. The 
season for harvesting it comes after the hurrying time, 
or that for securing wheat, barley, oats, rye and clover. 
3. It is said to be very nutritious. 4. Cattle, horses, 
and stock generally, eat it with avidity, particularly 
when the seed is allowed to remain on it. Mr. P. 
states that he has been informed that horses will keep 
fat on it without any other grain, even when doing mo¬ 
derate work. It has a very heavy head of seed, yield¬ 
ing from fifteen to twenty bushels per acre. 
-*-#-*-- 
Successful Draining with Stone. 
Messrs. Editors— -A year ago last fall I stated to 
the readers of the Country Gentlemen my plan of 
underdraining with stone, which I was then doing. I 
can now say that it has worked well. By this means a 
piece of cold, wet, uneven land has been dried suffi¬ 
ciently to plow and level down, which could not have 
been done before ; and it produced a good crop of corn 
last summer. It ripened very early too for the season. 
I consider the stalks worth as much for fodder, as the 
sour grass that grew there would have been. This last 
fall I have drained the remaining four acres of my 
eight acre meadow, in the same way, viz., we lay out 
the short drains forty feet apart—though we vary from 
this rule some ; when it comes near a wet hollow we go 
through that—we cut them three and a half feet deep, 
two feet wide at the top, and slant down to six inches 
on the bottom. We scrape the mud from the bottom 
perfectly clean, so that it is hard, like rock. This 
thoroughly done, we begin to fill with small round stone, 
taking care that no one stone is large enough to reach 
across, for the first layer, and so on five or six inches ; 
then the cobble and broken stones may be thrown in 
with less care, extending up to a hight of eighteen in¬ 
ches ; the little slivers from the broken stone and such 
like, we scatter alone on the top to fill up the cavities ; 
then place inverted turf on snugly, and press it down 
with our feet. The dirt dug from the ditch is then filled 
in, and it is finished. 
The whole cost is about sixty cents per rod, including 
drawing the stone, which pays by getting them out of 
the way. I am well convinced that these drains will 
continue to act well, and I cannot see why stone is not 
quite as good, if not better than tile, and it costs some¬ 
thing less here. Lucius Griswold. Litchfield Co., Ct. 
-•-«- •- 
Fresh. Water Shell Marl. 
Messrs. Editors —My experience in the use of 
“fresh water shell marl,” has been similar to that of 
your correspondent “A. B., Woodstock, Vt.,” who asks 
for information in your last number. 1 unite with him 
in requesting information from others, who may have 
succeeded in its use. 
Repeated experiments with it for many years past, 
have convinced me that it is more imperfectly under¬ 
stood than almost any other species of manure. 
I have used it however with decided advantage in 
raising potatoes, by applying it in the hill when in a 
perfectly powdered state, (and after it had been ex¬ 
posed for some months,) and also as a top dressing upon 
low meadows. To all other kinds of crops, and more 
especially corn, I have found it a decided disadvantage. 
“ Composting it with stable manure,” or “mixing it 
in the barn-yard,” is, in my opinion, labor lost—in¬ 
deed in my case I thought it a detriment. As a top 
dressing it will bring in white clover, and if used on 
potatoes when perfectly powdered, it will give a pretty 
good result. W. F. New-York , Dec. 29, 1857. 
