THE CULTIVATOR. 
131 
among farmers in a new country in clearing their lands. He that pays 
the greatest attention to manure in the former case, as he that subdues or 
clears the most land in the latter, is called the best farmer: but the great¬ 
est difficulty is to procure a sufficient quantity of manure for the annual 
consumption necessary for the improvement of our old worn-out farms.— 
The manure made by the stock of cattle on such farms is very inadequate 
to their necessities; therefore it is of great importance that we resort to 
new resources for manuring our poor lands.” 
It should be borne in mind, that at the time Mr. L. wrote, alternating 
crops, root husbandry, and clover culture, which serve now as important 
means of preserving, and of augmenting fertility, were in a measure un¬ 
known in our practice. Mr. L. proceeds to notice various manures, viz: 
Fish. —The quantity of menhaden, or mosbankers, taken upon the coast 
of Suffolk, and applied to the manuring of land, will astonish those who 
are not conversant with the facts. Immense seines are made use of—the 
fish are drawn to the shore, and carls are backed into the water and load¬ 
ed with scoop nets. Mr. L’Hommedieu says —“ This year I saw 250,000 
taken at one draught, which must have been more than 100 tons; one 
seine near me caught more than one million last season, which season 
lasts about one month.” The price is stated at $1.25 per thousand. The 
general practice was to cart them on to the field, spread them lightly, and 
plough them under. Their fertilizing properties were great; “ between 
forty and fifty bushels of wheat an acre,” says Mr. L. “ was not an un¬ 
common crop;” and he cites one case, where these fish were applied at 
the rate of 32,000 to an acre, and the ground sown with rye. Fortunately 
a neighbor’s sheep broke into the enclosure, when the rye was nine inch¬ 
es high, and again when it had grown six inches anew, and ate the crop 
off, both limes, to the ground; and yet the product was at the rate of 128 
bushels the acre. If it had not been eaten off, it was believed the grain 
would have lodged early, and been lost Mr. L. estimates the net profit 
of such an acre of rye at $85. 
Sink Manure. —A practice is mentioned of digging a pit in the rear of 
kitchens, of 15 to 17 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep, filling it with turf or 
dirt from the street, and conducting into it, from the sink in the kitchen, all 
the dirty and dish-water, soap-suds, and adding thereto ashes, lime, cham- 
ber-lye, and other filth of the house. All this was taken out and carted to 
the field in autumn, and fresh dirt put in. In this way, “some farmers 
make twenty tons of manure in a year.” 
JVitrous earth. —The practice prevailed of collecting the earth under 
barns and stables, which is known to become strongly impregnated with 
salt-petre, and applying it advantageously to land. We once improved, 
in garden culture, the ground from which an old barn had just been re¬ 
moved. The onions, cabbages, &c. not only grew very large, but were 
earlier at maturity than we have ever at any other time had them. 
Peat earth —The best mode of applying this, says Mr. L. is to draw it 
upon the upland, burn it, and spread the ashes. A better mode of using 
this earth is to make it into a compost with unfermenled stable dung, 'in 
the proportion of one part of the latter to three of the former, in alter¬ 
nate layers—or with lime—or cart it to the cattle yard, and as soon as par¬ 
tial fermentation has begun, apply it to the land. 
“ Ground well tilled, will not take half the manure for a crop,” Mr. L. 
justly observes, “ as ground of the same quality prepared in the usual 
way;” and ke might have added, is not half so liable to suffer by drought. 
And he adds, “ the faster your harro.v goes over the ground, the better; 
a quick stroke against the clogs breaks them much easier than a slow mo¬ 
tion. Hence harrowing with horses is much better than harrowing with 
oxen, because they move quicker: with a light harrow, the horses may 
go on a trot, which will break the clods much finer than when they go on 
a walk.” Much too depends upon the harrow; the angular harrow, made 
by Mr. Craig, is light; it pulverizes the soil thoroughly, and withal 
performs the work more expeditiously than the common kind. 
Again, in regard to good tillage, Mr. L. remarks, “ The finer the parts 
of the earth are made, the better; this we constantly experience in our 
gardens, and the same advantage would take place in our fields. The 
dews absorbed by the earth, when made fine or pulverized, and the nitre 
which adheres to it, add greatly to vegetation.” “ An experiment has 
been made to ascertain the difference between dew-water and rain-water; 
the result was, that the sediment or settlings of the dew-water, were 
more in quantity, blacker and richer, than that of rain-water.” 
Cow-penning. —Mr. L. suggests, that when this is resorted to, and it is 
a good practice to emich land, the pens should be long and narrow, for 
the convenience of ploughing them before the cattle are put in, that the 
urine and dung may more readily enter the soil, and be preserved, and 
not be so much wasted or impaired by the sun and winds as they would 
be if the ground was not ploughed—the ploughing to be repeated in one 
or two weeks—“ then cart away all the dirt as deep as it was ploughed, 
on your wheat field. By this means you get ten times more profit than 
you can make by yarding your cattle in the cow-yard, or on unploughed 
ground. This ploughed ground being made mellow, absorbs the stale and 
dung of the cattle; it receives and retains the dews and salts of the at¬ 
mosphere, and becomes good manure.” 
ON THE FATTENING OF HOGS. 
This is another communication from Mr. L’Hommedieu, the object of 
which is to recommend to farmers, to soak the corn destined for their 
hogs, until it has become soured, instead of feeding it to them dry — 
Much of hard corn, fed to fattening hogs, is not digested, and a conside¬ 
rable portion is discharged with the dung, which does them no good. 
Mr. L. estimates that one-tenth of the corn fed to hogs may be saved by 
soaking. Estimating the number of hogs annually fattened, to equal the 
population of the state, leaving out the cities, or 530,000, and that each 
hog consumed two bushels of corn, the saving by soaking the feed would 
then have been 50,000; wow, upon the same calculation, it would amount 
to about $200,000. Mr- L. thinks soaking as good as grinding, with the 
advantage of saving the toll, or one-tenth. If the corn is made to un¬ 
dergo fermentation before it is fed, the reasoning may be correct; but the 
modern belief is, that a saving of nearly fifty per cent is effected by grind¬ 
ing and cooking corn before it is fed, that the globules may be ruptured 
and the dextrine, or nutritive properties of the grain may be fully deve¬ 
loped. Accurate experiments, made by the Rev. Mr. Colman, have 
shown that pigs fed with cooked Indian meal, gain twice as fast as when 
fed with dry corn; but on the supposition that twenty-five per cent would 
be saved, exclusive of the toll, the saving, upon the estimate of consump¬ 
tion laid down by Mr. L’Hommedieu, would amount to half a million of 
dollars annually, to the state of New-York, by grinding and cooking the 
corn feed for hogs. 
Indolence the parent of vice. —It is a fact, which can not be contro¬ 
verted, that the want of mental and manual employment, often proves an 
incentive to vice, which infallibly will produce misery; and, so surely as 
the earth will bring forth noxious weeds, when left uncultivated, so sure¬ 
ly will one vice beget another; which, if not eradicated, will multiply to 
an alarming extent, until its victims become a pest to civil society, and a 
disgrace to mankind— Bridgeman. 
A RIGHT—A REPUBLICAN SPIRIT. 
“ It is true that much remains to be done for the laboring class in the 
most favored regions; but the intelligence already spread through this 
class, is an earnest of a brighter day, of the most glorious revolution in 
history, of the elevation of the mass of men to the dignity of human be¬ 
ings. 
“ It is the great mission of this country, to forward this revolution, and 
never was a sublimer work committed to a nation. Our mission is to ele¬ 
vate society through all its conditions, to secure to every human being the 
means of progress, to substitute the government of equal laws for that of 
irresponsible individuals, to prove that, under popular institutions, the peo¬ 
ple may be carried forward, that the multitude who toil are capable of en¬ 
joying the noblest blessings of the social state. The prejudice, that labor 
is a degradation, one of the worst prejudices handed down from barbarous 
ages, is to receive here a practical refutation. The power of liberty to 
raise up the whole people, this is the great idea, on which our institutions 
rest, and which is to be wrought out in our history. Shall a nation hav¬ 
ing such a mission abjure it, and even fight against the progress which it 
is specially called to promote.— Dr. Channing to Henry Clay. 
Pruning of the vine. —A correspondent in the Southern Agriculturist, 
has detailed in that journal, a successful mode which he has practised of 
training, or pruning the vine. It is to train up only the main stem, taking 
or pinching off all the lateral shoots, as fast as they appear, in summer, 
except those bearing fruit, and to pinch these off also above the fruit. In 
this way his vines bore early and abundantly—the fruit did not rot, but 
attained high maturity and delicious flavor. 
Kyanizing wood for garden purposes —Mr. Loudon has noticed in his 
Gardeners’ Magazine, a process discovered by Mr. Kyan, for preserving 
wood, and every kind of vegetable fibre, whether in the form of cloth or 
cordage. The process produces upon these materials the same effect that 
tanning does upon leather. The article to be thus tanned, whether wood, 
canvass, mats, lines, or other products of hemp or flax, are dipped into 
a liquid, prepared in a tank, and are thereby for a long time rendered in¬ 
destructible by the weather. 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES. 
SUGAR BEET. 
Robert Tripp, of Decatur, inquires of us, 
1. If the Sugar Beet is cultivated in the United States ? —It is, in va¬ 
rious parts, particularly about Philadelphia and Northampton, Mass. The 
manufacture is expected to commence this fall. 
2. If it can be made profitable ?- Well managed, it certainly can; but 
experience can alone teach us good management, and of this, we have as 
yet but a small stock. 
3. Can it be conducted by individual enterprise, or does it require as¬ 
sociate capital 1— The beet culture may be managed by individuals, and, 
with adequate capital and intelligence, so may the manufacture; but as 
the profit of the culture depends essentially upon a ready market for the 
roots, or the means of promptly manufacturing them into sugar, the cul¬ 
ture and preparations for manufacture ought to be simultaneous. 
4. Can a knowledge of the manufacturing process be obtained with- 
