1848. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
283 
in one kind of soil, is usually best to turn a furrow of 
the same dimensions in other kinds. H. C. B. New- 
Lisbon, N. Y., 1848. 
Good Butter. 
The articles recently published in the Cultivator, on 
the subject of butter for the United States navy, are 
attracting the attention they deserve, and leading to 
inquiries and investigations which will result in elicit¬ 
ing truth and correcting erroneous opinions. The Se¬ 
cretary of the New-York State Agricultural Society is 
entitled to high commendation for the interest he has 
manifested in acquiring important information, and 
publishing it for the benefit of community. 
The prejudice against butter, which is not marked 
u Goshen” or “ Orange County,” is passing away, and 
the dairymen of Chenango, Delaware and other coun¬ 
ties have obtained a high reputation for the quality of 
their butter. 
A Chenango farmer is now a contractor with the 
government for the delivery of ten thousand pounds of 
butter annually for the use of the navy. Last October 
he delivered the whole quantity—-the produce of his 
own farm—at the navy yard in Brooklyn, in firkins of 
eighty pounds each. It passed the usual rigid inspec¬ 
tion , and not one firkin was condemned. This instance 
is mentioned in confirmation of your remark, in the 
July number of the Cultivator, that other counties be¬ 
sides Orange produce excellent butter. I have another 
object in mentioning it, which is to stimulate our farm¬ 
ers by this example to exertion, and to the application 
of the requisite skill and attention to the manufacture 
of butter. The hills of Chenango afford the finest pas¬ 
turage, and the purest spring water in abundance. 
Without these, good butter cannot be made. With 
them, no poor butter should be made. The rules to 
be observed in the manufacture are few and easily un¬ 
derstood. The ^necessity—the absolute necessity of 
adhering to them, cannot be too strongly enforced. 
Oxford, N. Y., July, 1848. A. B. 
Crops in Illinois and Wisconsin. 
A correspondent who signs u A. E.,” and dates at 
Cicero, N. Y., gives us a sketch of some of his obser¬ 
vations during a trip through a portion of Illinois, Wis¬ 
consin and Michigan. He says:—“ From Chicago I 
went a few hundred miles through the States of Illi¬ 
nois and Wisconsin, mostly by private conveyance, 
which gave me a fair opportunity of viewing the coun¬ 
try; the grain crops here, as in Michigan, were very 
heavy on the ground, and bid fair to yield an abundant 
harvest. There is more spring wheat on the ground 
in Northern Illinois than there is winter wheat; it is 
considered a much surer crop, and nearly equal in qua¬ 
lity. They have recently obtained a new kind of spring 
wheat called the Hedge-row, which so far answers an 
excellent purpose. It has a very short head, is hardy 
and free from all kinds of insects; it gives a good yield 
and sells for five or six cents only, less on a bushel than 
winter wheat. The potatoes in Illinois have been in¬ 
jured to some extent by the disease so prevalent in this 
section, but in north Wisconsin they have as fine pota¬ 
toes as ever grew. They supply Buffalo and Rochester 
to a great extent. 
The soil of the great prairies in Illinois, is a deep 
black muck, easy to work and very productive. I saw 
here in one or two young orchards the locust borer 
working in the apple-trees—in appearance, the same 
kind precisely that has destroyed so many locust trees 
in this section. The people much fear that their young 
orchards will be ruined. Do you know of any preven¬ 
tive ? 
Geavel Buildings. — I saw in Wisconsin, some (to 
me) new constructed buildings, called Gravel houses. 
They take coarse gravel and coarse sand; and they put 
one bushel of their common lime to 8 or 10 bushels of 
sand; they take boards about a foot wide, set them on 
the edge, 10 or 12 inches apart, and fill them up with 
the gravel and mortar about a foot; then let it dry a 
day, and so keep on till they get to the height they wish. 
It makes a good substantial building. At Beloit they 
have many buildings of this kind, and at Southport they 
have a large church built in this manner. It is as cheap 
as any other good mode of building.” 
Advantages of Forests. 
The Hon. Geo. P. Marsh, in his address before the 
Rutland County Agricultural Society, makes the fol¬ 
lowing excellent observations in regard to the advanta¬ 
ges of forests :— 
“ The functions of the forest, besides supplying tim¬ 
ber and fuel, are very various. The conducting powers 
of trees render them highly useful in restoring the dis¬ 
turbed equilibrium of the electric fluid; they are of 
great value in sheltering and protecting more tender 
vegetables against the destructive effects of bleak and 
parching wdnds, and the annual deposit of the foliage 
of deciduous trees, and the decomposition of their de¬ 
caying trunks, form an accumulation of vegetable 
mould, which gives the greatest fertility to the often 
originally barren soils on which they grow, and en¬ 
riches lower grounds by the wash from rains and the 
melting snows. 
“ The inconveniences resulting from a want of fore¬ 
sight in the economy of the forest, are already severely 
felt in many parts of New-England, and even in some 
of the older towns in Vermont. Steep side hills and 
rocky ledges are well suited to the permanent growth 
of wood, but when in the rage for improvement they 
are improvidently stripped of this protection, the ac¬ 
tion of sun and wind and rain soon deprives them of 
their thin coating of vegetable mould, and this, when 
exhausted, cannot be restored by ordinary husbandry. 
They remain, therefore, barren and unsightly blots, 
producing neither grain nor grass, and yielding no 
crop but a harvest of noxious weeds, to infest with 
their scattered seeds the richer arable grounds below. 
But this is by no means the only evil resulting from the 
injudicious destruction of the woods. Forests serve as 
reservoirs and equalizers of humidity. In wet seasons, 
the decayed leaves and spongy soil of wood lands retain 
a large proportion of the falling rains, and give back 
the moisture in time of drouth, by evaporation or 
through the medium of springs. They thus both check 
the sudden flow of water from the sux’face into the 
streams and low grounds, and prevent the drouths of 
summer from parching our pastures and drying up the 
rivulets which water them. On the other hand, where 
too large a proportion of the surface is bared of wood, 
the action of the summer sun and wind scorches the 
hills which are no longer shaded or sheltered by trees, 
the springs and rivulets that found their supply in the 
bibulous soil of the forest disappear, and the farmer is 
obliged to surrender his meadows to his cattle, which 
can no longer find food in his pastures, and sometimes 
even to drive them miles for water. Again, the vernal 
and autumnal rains, and the melting snows of winter, 
no longer intercepted and absorbed by the leaves or 
the open soil of the woods, but falling everywhere upon 
a comparatively hard and even surface, flow swiftly 
over the smooth ground, washing away the vegetable 
mould as they seek their natural outlets, fill every ra¬ 
vine with a torrent, and convert every river into an 
ocean. The suddenness and violence of our freshets 
increases in proportion as the soil is cleared; bridges 
are washed away, meadows swept of their crops and 
fences, and covered with barren sand, or themselves 
