THE CULTIVATOR. 27 
NE&LIGENCE AND ERRORS IN AGRICULTURE. 
Messrs. Gaylord & Tucker:—I propose as a very 
proper subject for a paper for the first number of your 
journal, to point out some of the negligence and errors 
lhat farmers allow themselves to indulge in or commit. 
I have often thought, and still think, that one of the 
most useful periodicals that could be published, would 
he one for the correction of errors, called, if you please, 
j< Erratur.” Scarcely less valuable, may I not say even 
more valuable, would be the “Detector of Negligence;” 
tut if both were combined, who can conceive of the 
value of such a work to the farmer ? But enough of 
introductory; let us proceed to the discussion of the 
subject. 
I believe farmers lose as much by negligence as by 
bad cultivation. Let me illustrate: Whenever I hear 
a man complain that his grounds are overrun with this¬ 
tles, with ox-eye daisy, wild carrot, chess, nut grass, 
&C., &c., I at once say to them, there was a time, and 
that not long ago, when you might have prevented this 
evil with five minutes labor. When you first saw that 
villainous plant on your land, there were but one or 
two, or half a dozen, and you could have destroyed 
them with a dock extractor or hoe in a few minutes, 
but you neglected the opportunity. The next year their 
seeds were scattered over every field, and you might 
even then, by a few hours’ exertion, have exterminated 
the whole family; but now their name is legion, and 
your small force is inadequate to their extirpation, ex¬ 
cept at the expense of at least a season’s crop. This is 
not all. Your more careful neighbors, on whose grounds 
a vicious weed was never seen to grow before, are out 
with their weed-hooks, &c., endeavoring to destroy a 
noxious weed that they find springing up in all parts of 
their fields from the seeds blown from your fields, and won¬ 
dering whence they come. Would you do justice to 
yourself and to all your neighbors ? In all your walks 
over your fields carry in your hand a weed-hook, with 
such fixtures on the end as will enable you to pull up a 
narrow leaf dock by the roots, and never allow one of 
these or any other noxious weed to stand one minute 
after your first discovery of it. Do not, as many negli¬ 
gent farmers do when they see a weed of this kind, pass 
on, saying to yourself, “ I will send a hand to destroy 
this thing, on my return to the house.” That is not the 
way to destroy it. You may, and most likely will for¬ 
get it, on your return to the house; the hand may not 
be able to find it: he may not destroy it effectually, if he 
does find it; he may not look for it, (because the land 
is not his, the crop to come is not his, he is sure of his 
month’s pay at all events, he has no interest in its de¬ 
struction.) In all your walks over your farm, let the 
staff in your hand be a well constructed weed-hook; 
you can walk as well and protect yourself as well with 
such a staff or cane as with any other. Now this is the 
way to rid yourself of all noxious weeds, or rather to 
prevent their formidable appearance. Begin at the be¬ 
ginning, with these pests, or with any thing else. Put 
a new rail in that panel, in place of that rotten one yon¬ 
der; do it now, don’t wait till the broken rail invites 
some stray animal to leap into your cornfield, and in 
doing so breaks half a dozen other rails. Take a spade 
and drain off that pool of standing water in your wheat 
field yonder, and as you go along cut off that summer 
sprout or young shoot that is just starting from the limb 
of that apple tree, that favorite tree of yours, and mind, 
hereafter don’t let such things grow on any of your trees. 
Take a small spade and dig up all, every one, of those 
butter cups, (Rarmnculus bulbosa,) in your cow and sheep 
pastures, and as soon as you see a single plant of that 
poisonous plant hereafter, destroy it instantly. Don’t 
you know it is one of the most deadly poisons to cattle 
and sheep that can be found. It does not kill, it is true, 
at once; but it is a slow poison, and ultimately kills any 
ordinary animal that eats it; besides, it poisons the milk 
of cows, and is supposed to be the cause of the “ milk 
sickness ” of the west. 
Errors in farming or agriculture, are as numerous as 
instances of negligence, and even as deleterious. That 
was a capital error of yours, sir, in supposing that be¬ 
cause you had a thin soil with a clay substratum, you 
must not plow deep. Why, my dear sir, if ten years 
ago you had begun to plow deep, you would at this 
time have had a deep soil, instead of this thin skin that 
is made still thinner every time you scratch it. Plow 
deeply, as deep as you can, every time you plow, and 
in a few years you will have no reason to complain of 
short crops from drouth, or of winter killing from hard 
winters, nor of short crops from any thing else. Don’t 
try too much of it ! Try all new things in a small way. 
If you had tried but one acre of that new spring wheat, 
and kept trying one acre till you found it to be, or not 
to be, what it was cracked up to be; or if you had tried 
but one bushel of those new potatoes, for two or three 
years in succession; or if you had tried a quarter of an 
acre of that new Spanish clover, till you had found out 
what it was worth—if you had done all these, you would 
not now be complaining of loss by experiments. Go 
upon, in all cases, the wise proverb of Solomon, or St. 
Paul, I forget which, “ Try all things, and hold fast 
that which is good.” But Solomon or St. Paul, which¬ 
ever it may have been, meant that you should “ try all 
things ” in a small way, until you found them “ good.” 
Errors in judgment are so numerous, so universal, 
that it is difficult to point out examples; there are so 
many of equal importance, that we can hardly choose 
which to take; but that farmer yonder who throws his 
stable manure out of the window of his stable, on the 
side of the hill, and allows it to remain there from 
month to month, to be washed by every rain and 
bleached by every day of sunshine, commits not a 
greater error than him who purchases manure at a dis¬ 
tance, employs teams and hands to haul it to the farm, 
all at a heavy expense, and at the same time overlooks, 
or omits to avail himself of, the numerous sources of 
manure that are staring him in the face every hour of his 
life on his own premises. “ My father hilled his corn, 
and made good crops,” says one; forgetting, as it would 
seem, that his father’s land was new and could “stand any 
thing.” “I have the tallest corn, and will have the 
greatest crop of any in these parts,” says a Saratoga 
county farmer who had obtained some seed of the tall 
southern corn, in a tour last year to the south; forget¬ 
ting, or not having recollected, that corn that may make 
a good erop in the south, will not necessarily do so in 
the north, until the first of October nipped all his pros¬ 
pects in the milk. He had not duly considered that 
plants have their climates as all things have their sea¬ 
sons. 
But I must bring my discourse to a close, and will do 
so by a summary illustrative corollary: Two white 
millers, or moths, entered the gardens of two citizens, 
in the spring: one, of course, in each. The owner of 
each garden was present, and each saw the little crea¬ 
tures. One of the citizens instantly caught and killed 
the insect; the other allowed it to pass on, paying no 
attention to it. In mid-summer, the garden of the first 
citizen was free from caterpillers; that of the other was 
completely denuded of foliage, with bugs and offensive 
insects on every shrub and plant. “ Why,” says the 
latter to the former, “ how happens it that you have no 
caterpillars, while my garden is devoured by them ?” 
“ I killed the first miller,” says the former, “ you let it 
live, lay its 500 eggs, which in two weeks turned out 
500 caterpillars, and then in their turn, in a few weeks, 
each 500 more, and so on till you have your millions of 
insects, and I have none.” G. B. S. 
Messrs. Editors —Having seen an article in the Oct. 
No. of the Cultivator, respecting Nut Grass, I will give 
a slight description of the kind to which I presume your 
correspondent must refer. The grass to which I refer, 
makes its appearance in this climate I think, about the 
middle of June; the blades shoot forth in bunches of 
perhaps five or six, increasing in numbers however, as 
it advances in age, but never rising to form a stalk,, al¬ 
ways lopping off at the top of the ground; the leaf a 
beautiful glossy green, and at the root, (which runs to 
some depth,) may be found a nut resembling somewhat 
in size and shape the beech nut. I never knew it to 
grow in very thin land. To destroy it, is no easy mat 
ter, I think. A Subscriber, 
