1849. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
185 
fence, and the posts are inserted by driving. If of iron, 
a wrought iron pin with a screw is used to secure the 
cope to the base. 
For further particulars, inquire of Matthias P. 
Coons, Lansingburgh, N. Y. 
®l)e Janitor 0 ;Notc-I3ocik 
Farming in Western New-York. 
Eds. Cultivator —On reading in the Feb. and 
March numbers of The Cultivator , F. Holbrook’s de¬ 
scription of Judge Hayes’ farming on a hard, hungry, 
New England soil, we have a fine example of what in¬ 
dustry, economy, and practical science will do towards 
making the “ desert blossom as the rose.” But it 
would be not less an interesting spectacle if we could 
once look upon a farm in this all alluvial* county, on 
which a tithe of the same labor and manure, had been 
thus judiciously expended and applied. ’Tis true, we 
have many good farmers in western New-York, men 
well read in the theory, and practiced in the details of 
their great calling, if we compare them with the mass 
of farmers in the same favored section of the earth’s 
surface. But how will they compare with such mas¬ 
terly men as Adam Anthony, of Rhode Island, or W. 
A. Hayes of Maine, in the art of overcoming great 
natural obstacles, and the quickening of primitive ste¬ 
rility. As well perhaps, as the general who takes his 
troops to the battle field on steamboats or railroad will 
compare with the Carthagenian of old, who had first to 
soften and reduce the rocks before his army could scale 
the Alps, to look down upon the battle field. 
It will be urged that necessity is alike the goad to 
genius and industry, and the mother of invention ,• but 
that our soil requires no such labor and expense as the 
barren detritus of New England, that the extra amount 
of crop would not pay for the outlay, &c., &c. To 
meet this stereotyped argument, I only ask for a tithe 
of the labor, and no other amendment to the soil, than 
a judicious making, saving and application of the ma¬ 
nures which are inherent to, and may be made on the 
farm. I now appeal to those truly intelligent farmers 
of this (Seneca) county, who read The Cultivator , if 
a tenth part of the labor and expense bestowed by 
Judge Hayes in carting clay on his sandy lots, with the 
other amendments and extra tillage bestowed by him, 
would not enable them to grow twice as many bushels 
of grain to the acre as they now grow? or at least half 
as many imperial bushels to the acre, as is grown in 
England, on the best farms, under the best cultivation. 
But if the best Seneca county farmers are still behind 
some of those in Old and New England, they are se¬ 
cond to none in New-York. The premiums awarded to 
farms in our county by the State Ag. Society, two years 
successively, as the best farms in the Empire State, are 
intrinsic evidence of the fact. 
Much good is to be anticipated from the improved 
and improving practice and example of such men; 
while they adopt the mode of wheat culture, the very 
tidy farming of their immediate neighbors of German 
blood, they ingraft upon it those late discoveries in thd 
composition of manure and the art of manuring, which 
properly belongs to agricultural science. Such is the 
force of the example of such individuals on the rural 
economy ef this county, that even those farmers among 
us who have heretofore scandalized hook farming as 
empiricism, begin now to yield to the occular proofs of 
what the book has done, and is now doing. In fact, 
many of our farmers begin of late to be impressed with 
the dignity of their calling; and to embrace the belief that 
the hook is as necessary to the fanner, as to the mathe¬ 
* I say alluvial, because diluvion is often without the elements 
of rich alluvion. 
matician, the architect, the lawyer or the priest. But 
there is still in every community of farmers, that ego¬ 
tistic impracticable class, which blindly abuses heaven’s 
best treasure. Such men will never take the hint that 
the fat of their soil is not as indefeasible as their title to 
its measured acres, until they learn it in the diminution 
and failure of crop. Such men not only waste their 
manure, but their general practice of tillage is alike 
superficial, behind hand, reckless. When they are told 
in order to induce them to save their field and house 
ashes, that no plant can grow without the elements of 
its ashes, and that the ashes of all plants are nearly 
the same, their reply is, “ I dont believe in your book 
farming .” I sometimes think that the art, and I may 
now say the science of tillage, has no charms for such 
men, beyond the present food and dollars they force 
from the soil. The earth’s products, instead of exci¬ 
ting the mind of such individuals to the interesting stu¬ 
dy of nature’s laws, the modus operandi by which she 
produces and multiplies, in her vegetable and animal 
kingdoms, and then dissolves and reproduces from the 
scattered elements. It would seem that their marvel¬ 
ousness is the only faculty of the mind interested in the 
matter. As the Athenian raised an altar to the Un¬ 
known God, so do such self-blinded men, deify and 
erect an altar to the moon, as the patron saint of their 
trade and calling. 
The farmers of western New-York have yet but a su¬ 
perficial knowledge of the inexhaustible treasure they 
possess in the rich diluvial formation of their soil; ’tis 
said that layers of hard pan are in some places deposi¬ 
ted near the surface, but the subsoil generally contains 
organic remains, with all the salts necessary to pro¬ 
duce the maximum yield of cereal grains, to a great 
depth. On the plateau of Yarick and Romulus, the ta¬ 
ble land between the Cayuga and Seneca lakes, the soil 
is a heavy loam ; when the forest was first cut ofif, 
great crops of wheat and other cereals were produced, 
but now the surface soil is worn down heavy and dead; 
water sometimes stands on a hundred fields until the 
summer months, so that the average yield of the cereal 
grain's, according to the late statistics of our Ag. So¬ 
ciety, is much lower there, than in the other towns of 
Seneca county. Draining is the panacea for such iands ; 
their organic treasures are inexhaustible. One farmer 
in Romulus, whose farm is almost a perfect level, told 
me that the only perfect wheat he had grown for many 
years, was on the subsoil thrown out of the main ditch, 
which he had cut the same season the wheat was sown, 
to relieve the field from surplus water. S. W. Wa¬ 
terloo, Seneca Co., March 12, 1849. 
Shall we make Composts ? 
In The Cultivator for January, 1819, I read a notice 
of a work entitled “ Scientific ^Agriculture,” $c ., by Dr. 
M. M. Rodgers. I have since procured the book, and 
in glancing over its pages, I came to the following, un¬ 
der the head of “Composts 
“ It was formerly supposed, that great advantage was 
derived from the combination of several different sub¬ 
stances together, and forming what are called composts. 
The recipes for these compounds are numerous, and go 
to prove that the discovery of a good compost requires 
but little scientific or practical skill. When a compost 
heap is made up of several materials, which are all se¬ 
parately good manures, it lollows of necessity, that the 
resulting compound must be a good fertilizer. But it 
is impossible to supply any more in this way, than if 
these several ingredients were applied to the soil sepa¬ 
rately. And a little knowledge of chemistry will show 
that by this means no new elements can be generated. 
Neither can any new property be developed which could 
not be done by their separate action. We see that 
