THE CULTIVATOR. 
129 
Italy. 153,300 
France,... 12,500 
Russia. 39,600 
And the residue came from Prussia, Sicily, Denmark, &c. 
MIXED HUSBANDRY. 
We say oflawyers, that any dunce may win a good cause; but that the 
meed of praise is due to him only who manages well and wins a bad one 
We may say the same of a farmer: little credit is due to him, as a good 
manager, who upon the exhausting principle, obtains great crops from a 
good soil—his land continually deteriorating. But the farmer who, upon 
a bad soil gets good crops, and continues to improve his land, by draining, 
manuring and alternating his crops, is entitled to our highest commenda¬ 
tion. 
The great evil to be apprehended in our wheat districts is, that by 
neglecting the wholesome precautions of the prudent farmer, the lands 
will gradually, though perhaps imperceptibly, become, as they have in 
many of the old districts, too poor to bear wheat. We will suggest 
another precaution to those—and there are many of them—who place near¬ 
ly their whole dependence upon wheat, to the neglect of other crops, and 
of cattle. The experience of the two last years admonishes us, that the 
wheat crop is liable to suffer serious diminution from the Hessian fly, 
from hard winters, from the grain worm, and from rust or blight; that 
this diminution often amounts to twenty, fifty and seventy-five per cent. 
Under this view of the subject, would it not be prudent—merely on a 
calculation of immediate profit—throwing out of view the certain ad¬ 
vantage which would accrue to the land—would it not be prudent to 
introduce a more mixed husbandry, and to depend more upon farm 
stock? The rage for sheep and wheat husbandry, have so seriously di¬ 
minished our stock of neat cattle, that meat and the products of the 
dairy have become scarce, and command, in market, nearly double their 
former prices. The same remark will in a measure apply to horses. 
Live stock is less hazardous than grain crops; it requires less outlay of 
capital and labor; and the former enrich, while the latter exhaust, the 
fertility of the soil. Roots, again, alternate remarkably well with grain 
and grass, afford the best and most abundant food for stock, and add 
greatly to the amount of manure. 
The French farmers placed their great reliance upon wheat; the sup¬ 
ply consequently became great, the market glutted, and prices nominal 
This state of things gave an impetus to the culture of the sugar beet, as 
a substitute for the wheat crop, and the change has been found highly be¬ 
neficial. It furnishes the nation annually with eighty to one hundred 
millions pounds of sugar, which they before had to buy of foreigners, ena¬ 
bles them to increase and to fatten well larger stocks of cattle, and serves 
greatly to augment the fertility of their soil. In many districts of the 
German states, wheat no longer yields its accustomed product, and rye, 
spelts and roots have become profitable substitutes. In our own neighbor¬ 
hood, in the valleys of the Hudson and Mohawk, the grain worm has 
blighted the hopes of the farmer from the wheat crop, and cattle and sheep 
husbandry, and root culture, are annually increasing in extent, we have 
no doubt to the ultimate advantage of the farmer, and of the state at large. 
A change of this kind calls into action the latent talent, and the increased 
industry and good management, of many a man—and induces them to 
inquire, to think, and to improve—who would have gone on listlessly in 
ihe old way without ever dreaming, or believing, that there ever was or 
could be, any better mode of farming, than the exhausting, miserable 
system of their grand-fathers. And when improvement is once begun, 
and a man finds there is more which can be profitably learnt, it seldom re- 
trogades. 
These considerations induce us to put it seriously to such of our readers, 
as are confining themselves to a single branch of husdandry, be it cattle, 
or sheep, or wheat, whether they are not likely to improve their condi¬ 
tion by adopting a mixed system, comprising cattle, grain, grass and roots 
—which to us, seem admirably adapted to benefit and greatly improve 
each other. 
BLIGHT IN PEAR TREES. 
Several competitors have already appeared for the five hundred dol¬ 
lars Philadelphia premium, for a preventive in the blight in the pear tree. 
Two of the communications have appeared in the Farmer’s Cabinet; one 
from H. N. Watkins, of Prince Edward, Va. and the other from T. Emo¬ 
ry, of Poplar Grove, Md. 
Mr. Watkins, ascribes the blight to plethory, or too great a flow of sap, 
caused by pruning and ploughing; and the preventive he suggests, the 
utility of which he considers he has fully verified, is neither to prune, 
nor plough among the trees, after they have become well established in 
growth. He recommends that manure, if the land is poor, and the trees 
require it, be applied to the surface; and thinks ashes constitute a good 
dressing. 
Mr. Emory is of opinion, “ that the cause of blight and destruction in 
the pear and apple tree, is almost always what the French term coup de 
soleil, (stroke of the sun;”) and to avoid the stroke of the sun, he recom¬ 
mends that the trees be planted in a moist, but not wet soil, so as to be 
sheltered on the southwest by “ tall, dense forest trees, or a house or 
We notice these communications, not because we think that either as¬ 
signs the true cause of the blight, or recommends an efficient remedy or 
preventive; but rather to point out their fallacy. 
The blight is not confined to the apple and pear, but extends to many 
species of the natural order of Pomacece, as the quince, service, &c. and 
appears and disappears at intervals of some years; and hence we infer, 
that it is not caused by a stroke of the sun, nor an abundant flow of sap. 
These causes are continually operating, and if they produce blight in one 
season, they would produce it any season, and these trees would long 
since have been extinct among us. Both of these theories are contra¬ 
dicted by the well known laws'of vegetable physiology. But we are not 
left lo conjecture upon this subject. It has been satisfactorily shown, that 
the blight is owing to an insect, which is described and figured in the me¬ 
moirs of the Massachusetts agricultural society. The first appearance of 
the blight, that we have noticed on record, was in 1780. We hear 
nothing further of it till about 1802, when we witnessed its effects during 
that and four or five subsequent years. It appeared in our grounds again 
in 1824 to 1828—since which it has scarcely been noticed, though it may 
have appeared in other sections of the country. During its last visita¬ 
tion, we lost, perhaps, a hundred pear trees, some apple trees, and most 
of our quince bushes. Of the pears, some grew in dry, and some in moist 
ground; some in ploughed, some in grass ground, and some in lanes where 
the ground was hard trod. The blight affected all alike. The only reme¬ 
dy that we thought beneficial, was promptly to cutoff and burn all the 
diseased branches, taking care to cut below the discoloured bark and 
cambium. 
IMPROVED METHOD OF MAKING CLOVER HAY. 
We have in the Transactions of the Highland society two prize essays, 
for which (he society awarded ten sovereigns (=$44.40) and a silver me¬ 
dal, for improved modes of making clover hay. The old method of 
making this hay in Scotland is liable to more objections there than with 
us, as the Scotch climate is far more humid, and less warm, than ours. 
These objections, to use the language of one of these essays, “ are, first, 
that of allowing the grass to be ‘ too ripe,’ as it is generally called, before 
it is cut. Second, allowing the grass to be on the ground till it be either 
rotted with bad weather, drenched with rain, or dried up by too long ex¬ 
posure to the sun.” The principle of the improved mode consists in wilt¬ 
ing, or partially drying the hay with great despatch, so as to get rid of the 
redundant sap, either by spreading or forming it, immediately after it is 
cut, into small conical handfulls around the foot, leaving the centre open, 
thereby exposing nearly all the surface of the grass to the air. When 
sufficiently wilted, so that the stalks have lost their succulency, the spread 
hay, or small handfuls, are put into cock, where the hay undergoes a par¬ 
tial fermentation, and the curing process is perfected. The fermentation 
is considered essential, either in cock or stack, in order to convert the 
juices of the herbage into a saccharine state, as in the process of malt- 
ng, which is found to be both more palatable, and also more nutritious, 
for all animals fed upon it. 
These principles of making hay are similar to those which we have fre¬ 
quently recommended to the consideration of the readers of the Cultiva¬ 
tor; though the process of curing it is different, being unnecessarily tedi¬ 
ous and expenive for our comparatively dry and warm climate. With us 
clover, cut in a succulent state, will wilt sufficiently in the swath, espe¬ 
cially if once turned, to be fit to be put into cock in a few hours; and if the 
cocks are properly made, it will cure there, and be safe from the injuri¬ 
ous effects of rain. The advantages of a partial fermentation in the cock, 
which transforms the juices into sugar, and thereby increases the nutri¬ 
tive properties of the hay, are new to us, though we confess they appear 
to be based upon philosophical principles. “ I am of opinion,” says Mr. 
Proudfoot, author of the first premium essay, “ that the less turning do¬ 
er hay gets, the better, as the oftener it is turned its value is deteriorated, 
more especially after getting rain.” “ The end sought in making hay,” 
says the editor of the Farmers’ Register, “ is the same every where—and 
that is, to evaporate the mere water, and preserve the rich portion of the 
juices of the grass—and for these purposes it is desirable to have as much 
exposure of the curing grass to the air as possible, and is little exposure 
as possible to sun and wet.” 
EXPERIMENT IN FEEDING CATTLE. 
The Edinburgh Quarterly Journal of Agriculture contains lire details of 
an interesting experiment in feeding cattle, by Robert Stephevson. The 
experiment was undertaken with a view of ascertaining the relative profit 
of fattening cattle upon turnips alone, and of fattening them with turnips 
and other more expensive food, as grain and oil cake. For this purpose 
eighteen oxen were selected, over two years old; their live weights were 
ascertained at the beginning, during different periods, and at the end of 
the experiment, which continued 119 days. They were divided into 
three lots of six beasts each, and a correct account was kept of the weight 
of food consumed by each lot. Lot 1st were allowed linseed cake, bruis¬ 
ed beans and bruised oats, in addition to turnips, and during the last 
