18 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Jan. 
selection , be increased to a crown or top-knot, 
and yet the birds retain all their purity. 
Before leaving this subject, allow me a word 
or two on the absurd attempts made some time 
since, to claim exclusive purity of blood for the 
White Dorking, and to rule out, as impure, all 
colored fowls ! I was a school-boy in Surry, the 
land of the Dorkings, and passed many a holiday 
at Berry Hill, (then the seat of the late Robert 
Barclay, Esq.,) situated close to the village of 
Dorking, and, as might be supposed, the peculiar 
fowl of the country was here to be seen in its 
highest perfection, but they were of various colors, 
white, brown, and speckled. 
What does John Timbs say in his “ History of 
Dorking and its Environs,” published many years 
since, page 100, of the second edition ? 
“ There is also a breed of fowls with five claws, 
well known among poulterers in the metropolis, by 
the appellation of Dorking fowls • one sort is per¬ 
fectly white, and another of a partridge color. Co- 
‘ lumella, in his Husbandry, describes fowls of this 
kind; and it is conjectured that they were origi¬ 
nally brought here by the Romans.” 
Again the engraving of the “True Dorking,” 
as put forth in the prize essay of the Royal Agri. 
cultural Society, on poultry, is a richly colored 
bird, with a double or rose comb. 
At the yearly exhibitions of poultry in the 
Zoological Gardens, are to be seen Dorkings of va¬ 
rious colors, with only now and then a cross of 
white birds, all eligible for premiums. Yours tru¬ 
ly. R. Morris , Otsego Co., N. Y., Nov. 17, 1852. 
A Decided Specimen of Book Farming. 
The report of John Harold, corresponding 
secretary of Queens county, furnishes us a speci- 
of the success of a man, who dared to look deeper 
into the furrow than the horses who drag the plow 
through it, and who boldly broke through the 
brick-like, hard-pan crust, three inches below the 
surface, and over which the share had passed from 
time immemorial. 
“ I have before me,” says J. Harold, “the 
diary of a farm so worked, the character of which 
was, ‘ that hay enough could not be raised on 
twenty acres to keep a horse.’ The owner of this 
land became a member of our society; a new im¬ 
pulse was given to his labors, and from having read 
and heard how otehrs were improving their farms 
and increasing their crops, he was desirous of doing 
the same. Eagle D. plow was procured from Rug- 
gles, bourse 8t Mason, and in the fall of 1844, a 
seven acre lot was plowed up ten inches deep. 
When the first land was plowed, the neighbors 
came round to see the folly, as they termed it, of 
the book-farmer. One said he was killing the 
land in plowing up the yellow clay; another, the 
lot would not be worth so much as before by 
twenty dollars per acre; and another, he would 
find it all out next year. It was, however, all 
plowed, and pretty yellow it looked. By next 
spring it had changed to a brown color, and was 
planted with potatoes, which produced a good 
crop. Still the neighbors said it would never raise 
grain or hay; it was quite killed for all that. 
In Septembr, 1845, it was w’ell plowed, and ma¬ 
nured with home-made poudrette; two bushels of 
white Hutchinson wheat, twelve quarts of timo¬ 
thy seed, and in the spring, ten pounds of clover, 
sowed to the acre. This seven-acre lot produced 
the next year thirty-four bushels of wheat to the 
acre, weighing sixty-two pounds per bushel, 
and was exhibited at our county fair, receiving 
the first premium. This was a hard fact to get 
over; some decided it was all owing to the season, 
and some, it happened to be sowed at the right 
time of the moon. The lot has now been mowed 
five years, and was considered this year the best 
piece of timothy grass between Hempstead and 
Brooklyn, (twenty-one miles.”) 
The town of Hempstead, in the same county, 
furnished the same year, a crop of potatoes on 
the fourth of an acre, amounting to 68 1 bush¬ 
els, or 254 bushels per acre.. A two-year pasture 
was plowed seven inches deep, and planted with 
corn, manured with poudrette in the hill, fol¬ 
lowed the next year with the potatoes after 50 
one-horse loads of horse manure. The rows were 
two and a half feet apart, and the potatoes 10 
inches apart in the row. The cost of this quar¬ 
ter acre crop was $17; the net profit over $30, or 
$122 per ^cre. —«•— 
The Pigeon Hole "Borer.—Tremex Columba. 
Mr. Tucker —A few years since, on visiting the 
garden attached to one of the public buildings of 
our city, I had occasion to remark the withered 
and dying condition of a beautiful maple, which 
for a long period of time had been the pride and 
ornament of the place; and many were the con¬ 
jectures among individuals in the vicinity, respect¬ 
ing the cause of its premature death and decay. 
During the month of August of the succeeding 
year, when I again visited the spot, the branches 
had all been broken from the tree, and the bole, 
to the height of about eight feet from the ground, 
alone remained, and this was partially denuded of 
its bark. On the surfaces of these bare and expos¬ 
ed parts were to be seen, promiscuously scattered 
about, a considerable number of circular holes, 
averaging about the size of an ordinary goose 
quill, some of which had their orifices still closed 
up by the raspings of the wood through which these 
perforations had been made. Upon splitting off 
several portions of the trunk, and exposing the 
internal structure to the sight, it exhibited an im¬ 
mense number of ramifying channels or grooves, 
diverging in every direction through the wood, 
and directly communicating with the many open¬ 
ings on the surface of the tree. On a closer in¬ 
spection, most of these channels were discovered 
to contain beautiful specimens of a species of Hy- 
