THE CULTIVATOR. 
9 
of the north, the last summer, been wholly' of the early Dutton vari¬ 
ety, and planted early and upon dry ground, we doubt not it would 
have added a million of dollars to the value of our farm crops. The 
subject is one of great interest to the community, as well as to indi¬ 
viduals, and every intelligent farmer should endeavor to improve both 
his vegetables and animals, by propagating only from superior sam¬ 
ples. We cannot but notice the coincidence in the experiment of 
Mr. Baden, and that of Van Mons, in obtaining new varieties of the 
pear, and the perseverance in efforts to improve which both suggest. 
Mr. Baden perceived no great improvement till after several years. 
Dr.Van Mons, in his -efforts to obtain improved varieties of the pear 
from seeds, did not expect success before he reached the sixth genera¬ 
tion of seedlings. They both did succeed. 
While we thus urge farmers to endeavor to improve their animal 
and vegetable products, by propagating only from the best, they are 
to bear in mind, that the ultimate product and profits of both, will 
depend in a great measure upon the manner in which they are fed 
and tended. Neither a short-horn cow, nor a Leicester sheep, nor 
a Berkshire pig, will fatten without food. Their intrinsic value con¬ 
sists in making a greater return of meat, when well fed, from a given 
quantity of food, than is made by inferior breeds. So with crops. 
The Dutton and the Baden corn will neither of them give one hun¬ 
dred and twenty bushels to the acre, unless the soil is rich, and the 
crop well tended. Manure feeds and makes the corn, as the forage 
feeds the animal and makes the meat- Neither the animal nor the 
vegetable can manufacture forage and dung into meat and grain, 
unless it is placed within their reach. The Dutton and Baden corn, 
like the improved animals, are valued for the economy with which 
they convert food into solid grain, and the former, also, for its early 
ripening. _ 
The silk business. —There is at least one substantial objection 
against attempting to raise two generations of silk worms in a sea¬ 
son, viz. that it tends to kill the trees. If the mulberry will bear 
to be stript of its leaves once, it will not bear to be served so re¬ 
peatedly, in the same season ; and if there is a sufficiency of trees 
for two crops of silk, it is best to double the number of worms in 
the first; for the young leaves of spring are better for young worms 
than the old leaves of summer. Leaves make roots as well as silk; 
they are necessary to the life of the tree, and unless the leaves per¬ 
form their office to the roots, the roots will soon cease to perform 
their office to the leaves'. There is a mutual dependence between 
them. We have seen from the parliamentary reports of Britain, 
that children there are made to perform, in factories, 12 to 16 hours 
labor in 24, no doubt to the profit of the owners ; and we have.seen 
that these poor children become diseased, and ruined in their constitu¬ 
tion, by reason of this violation of nature’s laws—which ordain rest 
to the child, and leaves to the tree. Her laws cannot be violated 
with impunity, either in the vegetable or animal kingdom. 
On cutting cattle food .— A diversity of opinions exist among some 
of our correspondents, as to the length which hay and straw is most 
advantageously cut for horses and cattle—one party contending that 
an inch is short enough, and the other that it is not. We incline to 
the former opinion, and we would respectfully offer our reasons.— 
The object in using the straw cutter is to prevent waste, and to fa¬ 
cilitate the process of mastication. It is not enough to getthe food 
into the stomach, but it should go there in a proper condition for 
easy digestion—-in a -perfect masticated form, the fibre broken down, 
and intimately incorporated with the saliva of the glands. It is uni¬ 
formly enjoined upon persons who are sickly, or have weak stomachs, 
and it is a common admonition to the hale, to eat slow, and to chew 
well their food before they swallow it, that it may more readily di¬ 
gest. And we see that cattle, high fed with corn and oats, often 
void the perfect grain, without its having benefitted them a particle. 
Whether this would not be more or less the case with fine cut hay, 
we cknnot judge from observation, but we are told it would be so.— 
There is another difficulty to be apprehended from short cut food, if 
given to ruminating animals, as cattle or sheep, which chew the 
cud—that they would be very liable to lose this indispensable requi¬ 
site to health. At all events, there can be no doubt, that all solid 
food should be perfectly chewed, and mixed thoroughly with saliva, 
before-it passes to the stomach of the animal—the grain crushed, 
and the fibre of hay and straw broken by the teeth. To ensure this 
we doubt whether forage should be cut shorter than an inch, or an 
inch and a half. A gentleman who had fed largely with very fine 
cut hay, found that much was voided in an undigested state, tinged 
with blood from the intestines, and that his cattle, after a few weeks, 
ceased to thrive. 
Cob Cracker. —-We are inquired of, by a correspondent in Mary¬ 
land, in relation to a machine for crushing, or grinding, corn and 
corn cob, by manual or horse power. We have seen these machines 
that were propelled by water power ; but we know of none now in 
our vicinity, and regret that it is not in our power to satisfy our 
correspondent’s inquiries. 
The practice is gaining ground among our best farmers, of em¬ 
ploying a portable horse power for various farm purposes,—as 
threshing grain, grinding apples, coarse grain, sawing wood, slitting 
boards, cutting cattle fodder, and turning the grindstone—and it may 
also be applied to the crushing of corn cobs. The expense of ad¬ 
justing all these operations so as to be performed by a portable horse 
power, can be no serious obstacle upon a large farm, where most of 
these operations are necessarily carried on,—whilst it must be much 
more than counterbalanced by the saving in time and labor incident 
to managing them by manual power. We have had described to 
us this kind of economical arrangement; yet we are not enough fa¬ 
miliar with the details to justify us to lay down the plan, to state 
the ,details, or ito give an estimate of the cost. We should be very 
much obliged,to any gentleman who has adopted this arrangement, 
or to the mechanic who has fitted up the machinery, for a commu¬ 
nication upon this subject. There are several models of horse pow¬ 
er adapted to the purpose, as also threshing and cutting machines, 
grinders, crushers and saws. The desideratum is to select the best 
of each, and to arrange them for use in the most convenient and 
economical way. 
“ Long manure.” —Vegetable and animal.matters, when brought 
into a state of fermentation, by the agency of air, heat and mois¬ 
ture, immediately give off carbonic acid gas, which, if confined be¬ 
neath the surface of the soil, will become mixed with the moisture 
there, and be taken up by the roots of plants. And what is carbonic 
acid gas ? It is composed of two parts of oxygen, a constituent of 
atmospheric air, and one part of carbon, the principal constituent of 
plants, rendered volatile by the heat of fermentation. It is the di¬ 
gested food of plants ; it becomes incorporated with water in the 
soil; is taken up by the spongeoles or roots of plants; transmitted 
through the' sap vessels to the leaves; is there decomposed by the 
sun’s rays; the oxygen passes into the atmosphere; the carbon 
passes down through another set of vessels; and being gradually 
disengaged from the water which conveys it, by evaporation, it be¬ 
comes a solid substance of the plant. Carbon constitutes princi¬ 
pally the structure of the stems, branches, and roots of plants, and 
it can only find access into plants in a fluid state, combined with 
oxygen. From this view of the matter, the reader will understand 
why we recommend long manure for hoed autumnal ripening crops, 
—and why we insist that one half of the value of cattle dung is lost 
by suffering it to be reduced to the condition of short muck before 
it is buried in the soil. All vegetable matters contain more or less 
carbon; and carbonic acid gas is invariably produced in the fer¬ 
menting and putrifying processes. 
Indian com crop. —We publish to-day a very interesting commu¬ 
nication on the culture and profits of a corn crop, from H. Bowers, 
of Northampton, Mass. It affords a good illustration of the advan¬ 
tages of improved husbandry—scarcely any part of the culture, or 
of the harvesting, being managed in the old way. The species of 
corn grown is the same that we have cultivated for a dozen years, 
and is the same which has been highly commended by Judge La- 
throp, of Springfield, and other cultivators. It has never been in¬ 
jured by autumnal frosts in our grounds, ripening and being harvest¬ 
ed before their occurrence; and in 1828 the crop being in the crib 
the first week in September. We harvested last year a few days 
earlier than Mr. Bowers, and made, as our southern friends say, 
from our limited culture, about 200 bushels of prime seed ears. 
Dung.— It is common, at this season, to haul to the fields, the 
dung destined for the spring crops. Fermentation and waste often 
ensue before it is buried in the soil. To avoid this loss—we allude 
to unfermented dung—the dung should be laid in compact piles, of 
not exceeding eight loads, where most convenient to be distributed, 
and, as soon as the ground becomes thawed, covered with six or eight 
inches of earth, and'the surface smoothed with the spade. The ma. 
