1874 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
291 
—and sooner or later such will be the case. We 
must kill weeds by wholesale. It will not do 
to depend on the hoe and the fingers. Nature 
is never at rest. It will not do to let land lie 
idle. When it is not occupied with growing 
crops, we should be occupied in stirring the 
soil and killing weeds. It is the great secret of 
success in farming. 
The Osprey, or Fish-Hawk. 
Upon the first page is given an engraving of 
the American Fish-hawk, or Osprey (Pandion 
Carolinensis), and its nest. This bird is found 
in all the temperate parts of the United States, 
and is well known to those who live near the 
sea, or large bodies of water, for its skill and 
industry in fishing. Its length is about 25 
inches, its wing 21 inches; the head and under¬ 
parts are white; the top of the head, upper 
parts of body, wings, and tail, of a deep brown, 
and there is also a stripe of the same color 
through the eye. This bird arrives in the 
Northern States late in April, or early in May, 
and builds its nests in the vicinity of the sea, a 
lake, or large river, a number of pairs often 
locating within a short distance of one another. 
The nest is usually in the top of a large tree, 
and frequently a decayed one is selected; it is 
about four feet across, usually as high as broad, 
is composed of sticks and coarse grasses, and 
lined with sea-weeds and the finer grasses; the 
same nest, with annual repairs, lasts the same 
couple for several years. Three eggs are laid, 
and when the young are hatched, the parent 
birds are assiduous in supplying them with 
fish. The Osprey sails in mid-air until it espies 
a fish, and then, by a sudden dart downward, 
seizes it in its talons, often in its plunge going 
quite beneath the water, and as it rises, seldom 
fails to bring its prey, which it carries to its 
nest, provided it is not robbed by some Bald 
Eagle, which has been watching the movements 
of the more industrious bird. For a bird of 
prey, the Osprey is remarkably peaceable, liv¬ 
ing not only on good terms with its own spe¬ 
cies, but with other birds. Indeed, it allows 
various smaller birds to build among the outer 
sticks of its own nest, a peculiarity which the 
artist has recognized in the engraving. 
. «>-«— —e — --«■- 
How to Kill Wild Mustard. 
A correspondent of the American Agricul¬ 
turist has a farm well stocked with Wild 
Mustard, or Charlock, and he wants to know 
how to get rid of it. His rotation is corn on 
sod, barley, followed by winter wheat, and 
seeded with timothy in the fall, and clover in 
the spring. His barley crop is badly infested 
with wild mustard. He has pulled it out of the 
barley, but it is a good deal of work, and he 
thinks his labor is thrown away, as there are 
more “yellow-heads” now than formerly. 
We would suggest the following plan. Plant 
com as now. Cultivate thoroughly, and as 
late in the season as possible—say up to the 
first week in August. As soon as the corn is 
cut, and while the stooks are still in the field, 
cultivate between the stooks with a two or i 
three-horse cultivator. After the corn is husked, 
and the stalks drawn in, cultivate the field 
again, and afterward plow it, and leave it for 
the winter. The next spring cultivate it as ; 
soon as the land is in good condition to work, i 
and harrow, aad roll. In a week or ten days, j 
plow, cultivate, harrow, and roll, till the land i 
is as fine and mellow as a garden. Then in¬ 
stead of sowing barley, plant it again to corn, 
or potatoes, or root crops, or beans. The 
latter are perhaps best, as they need not be 
sown till the middle of June, and wheat may 
be sown after them in the fall, and thus you 
can seed down the land, at the same time as 
you would, had you sown barley. 
The thorough cultivation, and the repeated 
plo wings, will make the land so fine and mellow, 
that the mustard seed will start freely in the 
spring. If you plant corn, or potatoes, or 
roots, the mustard will be killed by the culti¬ 
vator or hoe. If you plant beans, there will be 
time to give an extra plowing in June, and 
this will kill all the mustard plants, and if more 
plants spring up afterwards, they will be killed 
when you are cultivating and hoeing the beans. 
If you plant early potatoes instead of barley, 
they may be dug in time to allow of sowing 
winter wheat. But if you plant corn, or sow 
root crops, and wish to follow them with bar¬ 
ley the next spring, we would drill in the 
barley early in the spring, put in two or two 
and a half bushels of seed per acre, and put it 
in deep, and roll immediately after the drill. 
Then when the barley is fairly out of the ground, 
and when the young mustard plants are just 
starting, go over the field with a fine-tooth har¬ 
row ; lap enough to completely scratch over all 
the surface of the soil, and thus tear up and 
kill the young and delicate mustard seedlings. 
Do this work thoroughly at once, and then 
follow immediately with a roller. This will 
kill thousands of weeds, and will not injure the 
barley. If you wish to seed down the land, 
sow the clover and grass seed, after the har¬ 
rowing and before the rolling. There is n.o 
better crop to seed with than barley. 
Ogden Farm Papers.—No. 54. 
What a country it is; and what a people 1 
I have a letter from a farmer in this State, ask¬ 
ing my advice concerning the recommendation 
of an “ Agricultural Chemist,” who comes to 
him with the endorsement of certain wealthy 
men of Providence. This chemist has found a 
short cut to agricultural wealth. “He can 
analyze the soil by putting it in his mouth, so 
that he can tell exactly what that soil wants to 
make it perfectly productive, and to continue 
to improve without manure, except some che¬ 
mical preparation of ammonia or alkali, which 
he will give directions for making from soda- 
ash and other things, the application of which, 
at an expense of one, two, or three dollars an 
acre, will set in motion the latent powers of the 
soil, and produce fine crops, year after year, 
without other manure. He goes through each 
field, and tells what to apply to each one, and 
how to make it. His charge, he says, is .quite 
moderate: says he was brought up a soap 
manufacturer, etc., etc. Now, we are all anx¬ 
ious to make some money at farming, and 
setting aside the heavy expense of manure, we 
can do it. My farm has been heavily manured 
for years $ith fish, and he says I am walking 
over thousands of dollars every day that are 
latent in my soil, and that he can set in motion 
at such a trifling expense, and so little trouble. 
Is he a humbug? The loss of one crop through 
him would be to me a serious matter; there¬ 
fore I ask your advice.” 
Of course he is a humbug. He has gone 
from the substantial industry of making soap to 
the more promising one of making “ soft-soap,” 
with which be will smear light-headed farmers, 
until he makes them believe that they can get 
something out of nothing, and I have no doubt, 
as the fools are said to be not all dead yet, that 
he will make a good thing of it. The tempta¬ 
tion to travel on a royal road, and to win suc¬ 
cess by a short cut. is strong with us all, and a 
glib-tongued traveling-ayent generally finds us 
good plucking. Certainly there is much latent 
fertility in the soL and mere is no doubt that 
it may be more rav-'d’v developed by the use of 
ammonia and other stimulants, but unless this 
is done with judgement, and unless the product 
is so used, as to return manure to the soil, all 
excessive production will result in greater ulti¬ 
mate impoverishment. It will be the wisest 
plan to develop the “ latent fertility ” by grow¬ 
ing good crops of clover, and by other judicious 
processes of good farming, and to stick closely 
to an intelligent application of “ the good old 
way.” It is pretty well determined, that the 
best laboratory analysis of the soil is of very 
little value as a guide in manuring, and we 
should hesitate to advise our readers to put 
more confidence in an analysis made by “ put¬ 
ting the soil in the mouth ! ” 
A correspondent in Wisconsin asks: “ Would 
it do to cross a Jersey bull on a grade Ayrshire 
heifer? My Jersey bull is getting very fine 
calves from native cows. The first one of these 
calves that has bred, is a fine milker, with very 
rich milk. She calved at 17-J- months, and is 
now giving about 12 quarts (calf three weeks 
old). The bull is fawn and white in color, 
darker about the head, fine horns, and the yel¬ 
lowest skin I ever saw. He is Si' years old, and 
weighs about 1000 lbs.; is very quiet and order¬ 
ly. Out of about 100 cows that he has had, 
there have been but 15 or 20 bulls. His calves 
from deep red or brindled cows, are of a light 
liver color, with the white ring around the 
muzzle, and the deer-like limbs of the Jersey. 
By the way, I notice that the milk of my na¬ 
tive cows, which have been served by this bull 
two or three times, is richer in butter than ever 
before—so that some of the qualities of the sire 
must impregnate the dam.”—There is no rea¬ 
son why a Jersey bull should not be bred to a 
grade Ayrshire. The better the cow, the bet¬ 
ter the calf, and there is no better cow to be 
found for ordinary family use, than a cross be¬ 
tween the Jersey and the Ayrshire (pure), there¬ 
fore, the Ayrshire blood in the cow in question 
can be only an advantage. How much the bull 
has to do with determining the sex of the calf, 
is not known. It is perhaps a question of his 
relative vigor, as compared with that of the cow, 
some breeders claiming that if the bull is the 
more vigorous, the calf will be a female, and 
rice versa. The fact that the bull is a Jersey, 
can have nothing to do with the question ; the 
fact that he is a choice animal, and is kept 
in unusually good condition, may have very 
much to do with it. The increasing richness 
of the milk cf the native cows, which have 
been served by this bull, would be sufficiently 
accounted for by the fact of their increasing 
age. It is hardly necessary to go so far as to 
ascribe it to the effect of their having been, 
served by a bull of a richer milk! race— 
which would be very farlndeed. 
Dr. McClure, veterinary^ surgeon, v pt Phila¬ 
delphia, writes to say, that .:the. tonic-recipe, 
communicated to me by_Mr- ^am. J. ©harpless, 
and givei in tbe/May.iiiup^Ner series, 
was given by him fcp Mr. 8 ., anu that it is 
published in ns work on the “ Stable, Field, 
