50 
THE CULTIVATOR 
Jan. 
bushels of lime, fresh 'from the kiln, to the acre, once in 
six or seven years. This costs ten cents per bushel. 
Experience, we are assured, has demonstrated the use¬ 
fulness of this application, though the specific effect of 
the lime may not be fully known. 
Fences. —These are generally made of posts and rails. 
White cedar affords the best rails; white oak is much 
used for posts. Cedar rails will last forty years, oak 
posts twelve years. The rails cost nine dollars per hun¬ 
dred—the posts the same. The cost of the fence when 
set, is fifty cents per pannel, of eleven feet—four rails 
to the pannel. 
Frequent attempts have been made to raise hedges of 
various kinds of thorn. These attempts have mostly 
failed. The thorns do not grow well, and their proper 
management in hedge form is often neglected. It is the 
opinion, however, of judicious farmers, that such post 
and rail fence as has been described, is on the whole, 
most economical—that the interest on the additional 
sum which a hedge, or some more permanent fence 
would cost, would more than support a fence of the for¬ 
mer material. Most of the fences here are well put up, 
present rather a neat appearance, occupy comparative¬ 
ly little ground, and form a good barrier against stock. 
Horses. —The horses appear to partake in a great de¬ 
gree, of the character of the Dutch stock, introduced by 
the early emigrants to this district. They seem to do 
tolerably well for common farm purposes. They are 
large, and throw so much weight into the collar, that 
they readily carry large loads. But in general they are 
not quite the right kind of animal even for draft. Their 
defects are, being frequently long in the back, not well 
ribbed up, inclined to be pot-bellied, long-jointed, with 
a laxness of tendon and muscle which unfits them for 
endurance. They tend to carry much flesh, and when 
in high order, as they often are, make a showy appear¬ 
ance, and please the eye of the cursory observer. There 
are exceptions to this description, and animals may be 
found which are comparatively free from these defects. 
In a few instances we met with horses begotten by the 
noted Norman horse imported and owned by Edward 
Harris, Esq., of Moorestown, New-Jersey. They are 
generally excellent, as farm horses,—much more strongly 
made, and of better action than the Dutch stock. A 
general cross with such a horse as Mr. Harris’s, would 
be a great improvement in those parts of Pennsylvania 
which we visited. 
Cattle. —Most of the cattle which we saw, appeared 
to be of mixed blood, and mixed too, without regard to 
any particular rules or object. In some neighborhoods 
the blood of the Short-horn was very obvious. On some 
farms the full bloods of that breed had been tried—the 
stock having been obtained from the herds of Messrs. 
Powell, Wolbert. Core, and others. The general tes¬ 
timony was that they were not sufficiently hardy, and 
had not, on the whole, manifested any superiority for the 
dairy. Some herds of cows were met with, which were 
a cross of the Short-horn with other stocks, whose dairy 
properties’were evidently good. As examples, we might 
name those of Messrs. John Feaster, James C., David. 
and Adrian Cornell, Jr,, near Newtown, Bucks coun¬ 
ty. Mention was made of the latter in a former chapter. 
These men have bred their cows with an object. That 
object is a good yield of butter, annually, and a profitable 
return of the animal in the shape of beef at last. They 
have already attained a very creditable success, and by 
continuing a judicious course, this success will be in¬ 
creased. Mr. James C. Cornell keeps twenty cows, 
and they average over 200 hundred pounds of butter 
each, in a year, besides the new milk and cream used in 
a family of fourteen persons. His cows are well-shaped, 
hardy, and thrifty, but have not the extreme tendency 
to fatten which would injure or destroy their value for 
the dairy. He has a cow which is half Alderney and 
half Holstein, which has given 15| pounds of butter a 
w'eek, on grass feed. 
Swine.' —A variety called the “ Chester county breed” 
prevails in some neighborhoods. It is a white hog, of 
enormous frame, loosely put together, a thick, heavy 
flop ear, large tail, too heavy for the animal to curl, and 
a general character indicating coarse quality of flesh. 
The animal is not destitute of fattening properties, and 
at eighteen to twenty-four months old, not unfrequently 
attains the weight of 600 pounds, dressed. But it is 
often the case that their disproportion and looseness of 
structure is such that they break down, and become al¬ 
most totally helpless, with not more than two-thirds this 
weight. The variety appeared to be losing favor with 
many farmers. The Berkshire, and what appears to be 
a cross of the Leicester breed, under the name of the 
“ Dutchess county hog,” was seen on several farms. 
Either of the latter is far preferable to the former. 
Sheep. —Comparatively few sheep are kept in the 
section we passed through, the farmers in general deem¬ 
ing them less profitable than cows. Those which are 
kept, are of the breeds adapted to mutton. The Lei- 
cesters, Cotswolds, and South-Downs, are occasionally 
met. Mr. Aaron Clement, of Philapelphia, exhibited 
some good specimens of these. The Broad-tailed Afri¬ 
can sheep were introduced into Pennsylvania from Tunis, 
by Col. Pickering, while Secretary of State, upwards 
of sixty years ago. Traces of their blood are still dis¬ 
tinctly visible in the sheep of this section. They were a 
hardy race, and the first crosses with the common stock 
were thought to be particularly valuable as early lambs 
for market. But the objections to the stock were, that 
they were not prolific, and that the fat tended to accu¬ 
mulate chiefly on the outside of the rump, and more 
than any where else, on the tail, which, in the full bloods, 
sometimes became eight or ten inches wide, and weigh¬ 
ed ten pounds or upwards. 
It is reasonable to believe that in the vicinity of a largo 
city, like that of Philadelphia, there are farms on which 
mutton might be fattened to good advantage; and with 
the facilities of communication by railroad, which are 
now becoming extensive in Pennsylvania, an increased 
attention will be profitably devoted to this branch of bu¬ 
siness. 
The Shepherd’s Dog. —Without the shepherd’s dog 
the whole of the mountainous land in Scotland would 
not be worth sixpence. It would require more hands to 
manage a flock of sheep, gather them from the hills, 
force them into houses and folds, and drive them to mar¬ 
kets, than the profits of the whole stock would be capa¬ 
ble of maintaining. 
