378 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[October, 
of the bolt, as in figure 3. To make the 
bolt perfectly secure against a dishonest at¬ 
tempt, any secret device or arrangement, to 
fasten it in its place, may be adopted, such as a 
■wedge or a pin, moved by a string, or every 
door in a barn, but one, may be fastened in¬ 
side, and only one left to be fastened from the 
outside, which will greatly add to the difficulty 
of entering to any unauthorized person. 
For an in-door fastening, to be used in pas¬ 
sages where cattle or horses pass and repass, 
the bolt shown in figure 4 will be found safe 
and convenient. The sharp projecting part of 
the bolts in common 
use, is dangerous to 
passing animals, but 
if a round bolt is 
used, and the pro¬ 
jecting part,by which 
it is slipped back and 
forth, is made heavy, 
or long enough, to 
cause the bolt to turn, Fig. 4 .—-bolt. 
and let it drop down¬ 
ward, there is nothing to interfere with the 
animals or harness in passing. It is one of 
these little conveniences, which are so small as 
to be overlooked, but which nevertheless often 
prevent less or more serious trouble. 
Progress in reclaiming Salt Marshes. 
We hardly know how to account for the very 
slow progress made in reclaiming the fertile 
salt meadows along the sea coast. It was dem¬ 
onstrated nearly twenty years ago, that these 
marshes can be reclaimed and made to yield 
large crops of clover, timothy, and red-top, 
and indeed all farm and garden crops. For the 
upland grasses they need only to have the sea¬ 
water shut off by dikes and tide-gates, and very 
little surface drainage. Yet, with millions of 
acres of these meadows along the sea-coast, not 
one in a thousand has been improved. These 
lands are generally owned in small parcels by 
farmers, who oftentimes live at a distance, and 
value the salt hay for the change of food it 
gives their cattle in winter. A marsh frequent¬ 
ly embraces a thousand or more acres, owned 
in a hundred or more parcels, and to drain it 
requires concerted action. This is quite diffi¬ 
cult to secure, especially when capital is to be 
raised to secure the improvement. Farmers 
are averse to change—slow to believe any thing 
they do not see with their own eyes. Yet there 
are some readers and thinkers among them, 
who are wide awake to improvements, and 
have faith enough to travel and see what the 
rest of the world is doing. Numerous small 
patches on Long Island, and New Jersey, and 
in New England, nave come under our obser¬ 
vation, and there are several large tracts in 
Massachusetts, so completely successful, that 
capitalists can no longer hesitate to put their 
money into such enterprises. Among the ear¬ 
liest of these improvements was a marsh of 
nine acres at Stonington, Conn., diked by the 
railroad embankment, and furnished with a 
tide-gate in 1855, with which the old readers of 
the Agriculturist are familiar. Though that re¬ 
claimed land has passed into other hands, and 
the tide-gate is not properly guarded, it still fur¬ 
nishes good pasturage and hay, and is much 
more productive than the adjacent upland. 
The marsh of James A. Bill, in Lyme, on the 
hanks of the Connecticut River, yielded luxuri¬ 
ant crops of hay for many years, and was fi¬ 
nally changed to a cranberry bog. No case of 
failure, when the tide-gate has-been kept in re¬ 
pair, has come under our observation. A new 
interest is awakened in Massachusetts by the 
great success in reclaiming the large Marshfield 
marsh of 1,400 acres. The sea-water was first 
shut out in November, 1872—after years of 
talk, labor, and persecution, such as the pion¬ 
eers in such a work alone can appreciate. The 
barrenness, ruin, and disaster that were predict¬ 
ed have not taken place. Instead, there has 
been an increased growth of the grasses that 
have sprung up among the waning salt-grasses. 
The yield of hay surpasses all expectation, and 
it is of excellent quality, far superior to salt- 
hay. As yet there is no well digested plan for 
introducing the upland grasses. In an experi¬ 
mental way, small patches of timothy, red-top, 
and clover have been sown on the surface 
without any preparation. The marsh has not 
been plowed, and this will not be necessary to 
stock it with these grasses. The salt-marsh sod 
is like a sponge, and grass seed catches upon it 
quite as readily as upon prepared upland. 
There are isolated patches of red-top that will 
probably cut three tons to the acre this sea¬ 
son. Red-top seems to be admirably adapt¬ 
ed to these reclaimed lands. Other grasses do 
well so far as they have been experimented 
with. The coarse salt-grasses near the creek 
are nearly all dead, and will soon disappear en¬ 
tirely. The experiment is a complete success, 
and the mouths of the gainsayers are effectual¬ 
ly stopped. Grass four feet long, and timothy 
plumes five and six inches in length are argu¬ 
ments not easily answered. The estimates of 
the value of these lands made in the Agricul¬ 
turist twenty years ago are fully realized. In 
many of the older States there is no more 
promising field of investment in agricultural 
improvement than in these salt marshes. 
— — <— —« ® - 
A Home-Made Brush. 
By and by the time for slaughtering hogs will 
arrive, and a great many bristles will be thrown 
away and wasted. The following plan of 
utilizing them is sent to us by a correspondent. 
Take a piece of strong wood, and shape it like 
a brush handle, and split it at the thick end 
with a fine saw, as at a in the engraving. 
Place the bristles with their butt ends in the 
split on both sides. Tie the end of the split 
stick with waxed twine, and fasten it, (see b). 
Then turn down the bristles, and wrap them 
with waxed twine firmly and smoothly, making 
a brush, (see c) that will answer all the uses of 
a purchased paint brush upon the farm or 
around the house. 
A California Farm. —A farm in Califor¬ 
nia has lately been rented for $40,000 per 
annum. It consists of 20,000 acres, and is 
stocked with 1,900 head of cattle, 100 horses, 
50 mules’and 1,500 hogs. The lessee purchased 
the stock and the standing crops for the sum of 
$74,250. This farm is all arable land. The 
possession of large tracts of land under old 
Mexican grants, makes this extensive farming 
possible in California. How long it will last 
under the system of agriculture prevalent in 
that State, is a question. Such a farm is an 
anomaly in American farming, and we believe 
the like can be met with in no other State. 
Drill Sowing Wheat. 
Eveiy year’s experience is in favor of drilling 
wheat. It shows more and more that, as 
against sowing the seed broadcast, it is 
economical in labor and in seed, and gives a 
better crop. The difference in labor is at least 
$1.00 an acre, or the cos* of two harrowings 
after sowing, or one cultivating. The differ¬ 
ence in seed is at least half a bushel, or 50 cts., 
to $1.00 an acre, and the difference in the crop 
is fully one-fourth, or upon fairly good soil, 
six bushels or nine dollars per acre. Eleven 
dollars per acre upon ten acres, will more than 
pay for the best drill made, which will sow ten 
acres a day. But if the means of purchasing a 
drill are not available, and there are less than 
ten acres of wheat to be sown, it will yet pay 
to hire a drill, which may be done from some 
neighbor, fortunate enough to possess one, for 
50 cents per acre. We have not yet seen a 
part of the country, where a drill could not be 
purchased or hired, and very few fields upon 
which a drill could not be used, if the ground 
was properly prepared. It is one of the 
greatest advantages resulting from the use of 
machinery upon farms, that it to a great ex¬ 
tent necessitates good farming. At least that 
it compels improvements, and the farmer who 
once enters upon the march of improvement, 
rarely stops and never turns back. Thus when 
a drill is used for the first time, the farmer 
finds his crooked fence in the way; his narrow 
gates, or his awkward bars are inconvenient, 
the brush and weeds around his fence interfere, 
his poor plowing is troublesome, the baulks 
and hard spots that have been left, a nuisance 
to him, and the weeds, trash, rough clods, and 
stones upon the surface, are a severe tax upon 
his patience. The next season all these faults 
will be remedied, because discovering the profit 
of the machine, he is obliged to prepare for its 
use. This is like the entrance of light into 
dark places, and a number of things that were 
never noticed or suspected before, are now so 
conspicuously apparent, that they cannot be 
any longer left undone. The same is true as 
to the use of the mower or the reaper, and 
thus the money spent for any of these needful 
machines, is repaid in more ways than one. 
The Position of Windows in Horse Stables. 
We find in a German exchange some curious 
observations on the manner in which the posi¬ 
tion of thewindows in the stable affects the eyes 
of a horse. In one instance the horses of a 
farmer,—fine animals, celebrated for their ex¬ 
cellent condition, were kept in a el aide lighted 
only by a small window at one side. When 
light was needed for work, the door was tem- 
porarily left open; the result was that nearly all 
of these animals had eves of unequal strength, 
and in time a number of them became blind on 
the side toward the window. A strong light 
directly in the horses’ faces has been found to 
weaken the sight. The worst position of all 
