1849, 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
237 
and when from any cause it is suspended, our cattle be¬ 
come diseased. Hence we can readily see that when 
we shut our cattle in pens, stalls or yards, we deprive 
ihem of their natural exercise, and interfere with their 
Natural habits. To enable our stock to thrive and fat¬ 
ten under such restraints, we are compelled to aid them 
various ways; the most usual being the application 
of food in a partially prepared state, by grinding, or 
breaking it into parts, that it may be more easily di¬ 
gested. Various trials have proved the efficacy of this 
system; for instance, two milch cows were stalled and 
fod as follows, for five days, on whole barley, with 
grass, and yielded one hundred and eleven pounds of 
milk. The same food was continued with regularity 
for five days longer, and the milk decreased ninety-sev¬ 
en pounds. ' The same cow at another period was fed 
on ground barley, with grass and some hay, and pro¬ 
duced during the first five days, one hundred five and a 
half pounds of milk; in the next five days she gave one 
hundred and five pounds, and being continued on the 
same ground feed for five days longer, the milk increa¬ 
sed to one hundred and ten pounds. The results from 
the second cow were similar. 
It cannot be necessary to multiply like cases, for the 
truth is very generally understood, that all food when 
bruised or ground into meal, is better for our stock than 
in a whole or unbroken state. 
This leads us to inquire how we can grind or break 
the food with most economy. The expense of sending 
to a distant mill is a serious impediment, detaining a 
man and team the greater part of a day. The small 
steel hand-mills wear too rapidly. These difficulties 
have caused the production of various contrivances for 
grinding grain by such horse power as most of our far¬ 
mers can command. 5 
Both Hussey and Sinclair, of Baltimore, have ma¬ 
chines for grinding corn and cob together for feed; but 
we are not yet decided as to the economy of using the 
cob; for my own part, having tried it for two successive 
years, I am rather disposed to abandon it; yet we 
should wait the coming of the several analyses of the 
corn plant now in progress, before we relinquish it. 
In Massachusetts, a small run Of stones has been so 
arranged as to grind grain or bruise it for food, and it has 
many advocates. The most perfect machine however, 
as yet produced, is the mill patented by Fitzgerald, 
and now manufactured in New-York by Charles Ross 
& Co. Many are using this sma'l mill on their farms 
with advantage, in various ways; for its ingenious and 
simple construction, enables the farmer to break or 
grind any of his grains for feed; or at pleasure, he can 
reduce them to the finest meal for his family use. An¬ 
other advantage is that, he may grind every grass seed 
or seed of every weed which finds its way into his barn 
with the grain, which being separated by the fanning 
mill, and ground in this small mill, affords a highly nu¬ 
tritious food for stock, while it destroys, and thus pre¬ 
vents the propagation of foul weeds. Here then is the 
means by which a systematic feeding of our stock may 
in its season be rigidly carried on. The power of two 
horses is necessary for these small mills, and every far- 
mec can best make his own calculations as to the eco¬ 
nomy of the system, which must be governed by the 
size of his farm and the number of his stock. Agri- 
cola. Seneca County. 
Shall we kill Moles? 
We have had several inquiries relative to the best 
modes of destroying these animals, and have in former 
numbers given descriptions of traps most approved of 
for that purpose. The question, however, has been 
raised, whether it is for the interest of the farmer to 
destroy moles ? Their chief food is insects, and it is to 
obtain these, that they burrow in the ground, and throw 
up little hillocks of earth, in which latter act lies the 
offence for which their lives are taken. Our acquaint¬ 
ance with the habits of this animal is not sufficiently in¬ 
timate to enable us to say whether the good which he 
does to man preponderates over the evil; but we would 
recommend the following extract from a late number of 
the North British Agriculturist , as calculated to lead 
to proper observations. 
James Hogg, better known by the cognomen of the 
11 Ettrick Shepherd,” in an interesting paper published 
in the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, appears to bo 
amongst the earliest advocates for the preservation of 
moles, a view also entered into by the Editor of that 
Journal, who questions whether the mole may not be a 
very important friend to the farmer. “ This is by the 
destruction of grubs, wireworms, and the like. It is 
known that the mole is a very voracious creature. He 
subsists on worms and the larvae of insects, which he 
finds under ground, where no other enemy can reach 
them; and, at night he sallies forth and pursues his 
prey on the surface. It is probable that he then des- 
stroys a vast number of grubs and other creatures, 
whose ravages would all be felt in their season. Can 
it then be that in destroying the mole we are guilty 
of the heedless destruction of a friend ? The matter is 
worthy of more consideration than it has, perhaps, yet 
obtained. We think that a strong case has been made 
out in favor of the ‘ blessed little pioneer,’ by our in¬ 
genious and kind hearted correspondent; and that in all 
the pastoral districts of the country, a verdict of ‘ not 
guilty’ may be brought in in favor of the long-enduring 
mole. Let us hope, then, that, henceforward he may be 
suffered to live in peace, and die of old age, in all the 
sunny glens and green sward knolls of Yarrow. But what 
will the insulted gardener say to this our care of his an¬ 
cient enemy? ‘ He is a thief, he steals my acorns by the 
bushel, destroys my onion beds, and roots up my tulips.’ 
Alas for the little culprit! Within the limits of the 
ravaged garden, we fear we must give him up to the ven¬ 
geance of the trap. But on the wide spread surface of 
the fields, where there are no onion beds to ravage, and 
no tulips to be laid waste, and where little space is yet 
left for the denizens of nature to breathe and sport in, is 
it quite certain that all the mischief which the liitle mole 
works to our turneps and our mangel wurtzel is not paid 
to us with usury, by the prodigious multitude of larvae and 
destructive insects which he consumes?” Several writers, 
within these few years, in the Gardeners’ Chronicle and 
Gardeners’ Journal , have taken up views favorable to 
the preservation of the mole, and even have gone so far 
as to purchase them at so much per head, and turned 
them out on their own lands. 
It is no doubt, testing the temper of the enthusiastic 
florist in no small degree to find that this industrious en¬ 
gineer has, during the night, driven a tunnel through the 
centre of his tulip bed, and, peradventure, hasupheaved 
a favorite prime Bagnet or Byblomen; still, it is very 
questionable whether, had not the mole taken that direc¬ 
tion, no doubt in quest of food, that the wireworm or grub 
might not have done him triple the injury. In fields, we 
are persuaded of their advantage, and even in gardens we 
have ceased to disturb them; for were there not insects 
for them to feed upon, they would leave us and go else¬ 
where, and wherever moles abound there also abound 
the wireworm, a much more destructive enemy. 
The farmers in Belgium are averse to their being de¬ 
stroyed, and probably the most unpopular act in our 
own life was the introduction of English mole traps in¬ 
to that country; and although upon a royal domain and 
at the command of majesty itself, all our endeavors to 
extirpate them proved unavailing, and the habits of a 
gardening and agricultural people were yielded to as an 
act of expediency. 
