I 860 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. , 
4 = 4:7 
and the journey money—well, well! to be sure 
her ladyship knows best!’ Ward evidently be¬ 
grudged the money. Victoria bred V. Regia, 
V. Rubra, and Prince Victor, and died of inflam- 
imation of the lungs a week after the latter’s 
birth. V. Rubra also died; and the non-lovers 
■of Short-horns were delighted! How they twit¬ 
ted me with their remarks as to the “ risk,” 
■“ unprofitableness,” and “ absurdity ” of giving- 
such “ wicked prices.” Tlieir condolences sa¬ 
vored more of sarcasm than sympathy, but I 
went on my way. And I now affirm that Vic¬ 
toria was the cheapest purchase I ever made.” 
—Lady Pigot has sold of the produce of this 
remarkable cow about $14,000 worth of stock. 
I never have believed that ordinary farmers 
with limited capital and with no special aptitude 
or taste for the business should undertake 
to raise thoroughbred animals. This is the 
work of the professional breeder. But there 
can be no doubt of one thing,—every farmer 
should make it a rule never to use anything but 
thoroughbred, pedigreed males. No matter how 
good a grade animal may be, he has not half the 
force to impress his qualities on his offspring 
that is possessed by the thoroughbred. How 
few farmers seem to understand this matter! 
If I was going to seed down a piece of new 
land for permanent grass—that is, land which 
had never been cropped, I would be very care¬ 
ful not to crop it. If rough and weedy, instead 
of planting it to corn, summer-fallow it. You 
have then a good opportunity to level and clear 
it. Plow it up the fall previous, the earlier the 
better, in order that the old sod and rubbish 
may have time to rot. If the land is liable to 
be overflowed, or there is not fall for anything 
except surface drainage, be careful to make 
numerous dead furrows, and in such a way that 
tiie water will pass off quickly in the spring. 
When dry enough in the spring, plow again, if 
the sod is sufficiently rotted. If not, cultivate 
or harrow the surface, and keep down every 
sign of vegetation. In such circumstances the 
sod will rot very fast, especially in warm 
weather. Then plow again, and in such a man¬ 
ner as to level the land as much as possible. 
Use a dirt scraper, if necessary, to fill up the 
hollows caused by trees that were blown down. 
As a general rule, this will not be necessary. 
Make the land loose and mellow, and a good 
cultivator passed over the hillocks two or three 
times in different directions will level them and 
fill up the hollows. Keep working the land un¬ 
til the middle of August, and then seed it down 
with a peck to half a bushel of Timothy seed pet- 
acre, and as many other varieties of good grass 
seed as you can get—and the next July will 
bring you a grand crop of Timothy hay, and the 
aftermath will afford such rich pasturage that 
the cows will make more butter and cheese 
than they did in June on the best of ordinary 
pastures. We can afford to summer-fallow for 
grass as well as we can for wheat. Why not ? 
A crop of good grass pays better than two crops 
of poor wheat. There is nothing more import¬ 
ant in agriculture than rich grass. I do not 
mean simply a large crop of grass, but grass of 
the highest quality. If we could get as much 
nuisriment in one ton of grass as we usually do 
in two tons, the one ton would be worth three 
tons. I fear I do not make myself understood. 
Supposing a cow eats 100 lbs. of grass a day, 
and makes I lb. of butter, we may assume that 
75 lbs. of the grass is used to sustain the vital 
functions, and 25 lbs. to make butter. Let the 
cow eat and digest 125 lbs. of grass, and we 
should get lk lb. of butter a day. If she could 
cat and digest 150 lbs. we. should get 2| lbs. of 
butter a day. But this cannot be done. The 
stomach will not hold it, and the ouR waj r we 
accomplish the object is by supplying a little 
concentrated, highly nutritive food, such as 
corn or pea meal. The grass will furnish a 
given amount of nutriment at a much cheaper 
rate than it can be attained in grain. And the 
reason we can afford to feed grain to cows is 
simply because we can thus get them to eat 25 
per cent more food, and thus get 100 per cent 
more butter—or if 50 per cent more food, 300 
per cent more butter. And it follows from 
these figures (which, of course, are hypothetical,) 
that if we could make our grass 25 per cent 
richer we should make it twice as valuable,- or 
if 50 per cent better, three times as valuable. 
In other words, one ton would be worth as. 
much as three, while in point of fact it only 
contains as much nutriment as a ton and a half. 
Now, I do not say that summer-fallowing an 
old pasture that has never been cropped will do 
this, but it will certainly produce richer grass 
than if the land was planted to corn and after¬ 
wards seeded down with oats. These grain 
crops rob the land of the very things that we 
need to make rich grass. 
Farmers are making a great mistake in 
slaughtering their sheep. But nothing will 
stop them. It is a pity we cannot have more 
stability and fixedness of purpose in our agri¬ 
culture. What we do we should do well—and 
stick to it. A farmer should think for himself, 
and not be influenced too much by outside 
opinion. “ You cannot make anything by rais¬ 
ing common crops,” said a friend a year ago; 
“ you should set out a hop-yard.” What would 
he say now ? There has been more money lost 
in hops the last year than would richly endow 
an agricultural college. And if people were 
educated to think they would have foreseen 
such a result. The fact is that common crops 
pay better now than anything else, provided 
3 'ou can only raise enough of them per acre. 
Stick to what you understand, and let those 
who have a fancy for novelties try them. There 
arc enough farmers, so called, who wish to 
make money easily and rapidly, without you 
and me adding to the number. 
I do not mean that one should always fol¬ 
low in the beaten trackwe should make con¬ 
stant efforts to improve our processes. I think 
I hit on a good idea in summer-fallowing for 
spring barley. As yet I have plowed the field 
but once, but I have been through it twice with 
the cultivator, and it is now in splendid con¬ 
dition. The sod is nearly all rotted. Before 
winter sets in I shall plow deep, and then mere¬ 
ly cultivate before sowing barley in the- spring. 
I use four horses abreast on the cultivator, and 
put it in as deep as the land was plowed, and in 
some places it goes in a little deeper. A man 
can drive four horses as easily as two, and there 
is no trouble in attaching them to the cultivator. 
EVENER, ETC., FOR TWO PAIRS OP HORSES. 
All that you want is an evener and a couple of 
extra clevises. We made an evener out of a two- 
inch plank, eight feet long, ten inches wide in 
the centre, and tapering to six inches at the end. 
It is one of the most useful things on the farm. 
Why strain a span of horses in drawing a stone, 
with another team standing near, doing nothing, 
when a simple thing of this kind would enable 
us to put on the four horses and draw the load 
with ease ? There is no extra rigging required. 
I have cultivated the corn stubble twice this 
fall, and shall go over it again if the weather is 
dry enough. A two-horse cultivator on a large 
farm is an absurdity. It does not go deep 
enough, or wide enough, or if it does it is “ a 
regular horse killer.” Put on four horses, and 
it becomes an exceedingly effective implement. 
I sold my hogs the first of October for 10 
cents per lb., live weight, the drover wanting 
them, he said, to “ top off” a car load. And yet 
these pigs have had nothing but the run of the 
yard last winter, with a little corn meal for a 
week or two in spring, until the clover got fairly 
started. Since then they have had nothing but 
clover, and a little sour milk and wash from the 
house. It would, of course, have paid well to 
have given them a little meal with the wash, 
but I was short of corn, and expected low prices 
for pigs this fall. On the whole, however, they 
did well on the grass. They had plenty of it. 
They were grade Essex, and of course had 
splendid appetites. A hog that will not eat 
well is not worth keeping. They are light¬ 
boned pigs, with little offal, and never squeal, 
and nearly all they eat, over and above what is 
needed to sustain the vital functions, goes to 
make good, solid pork—and they will eat a 
good deal. If a farmer will but use thorough¬ 
bred males, I do not care which particular 
breed he selects, so that it is one which has 
been what Darwin calls “ ennobled.” He must 
be pure, without alloy for several generations. 
Then cross this refined, high-bred, “ noble,” 
and, if you will, somewhat delicate animal, on a 
large, coarse, vigorous, common sow, that has 
never been starved, on the one hand, nor pam¬ 
pered, on the other, and you will get little pigs 
that are “ perfect beauties,” and which will grow 
rapidly and fatten at any age desired. Such 
cross-bred pigs will outgrow the thoroughbreds. 
But of course that is the end of them. The ex¬ 
tensive diffusion of the Chester Co. pigs during 
the past dozen years has made it not difficult to 
find the right kind of sows for the purpose of 
crossing with any of the established breeds—such 
as the Suffolk, Berkshire, Essex, or Yorkshire. 
We may argue as much as we please against 
the use of pork, it will continue to be the favor¬ 
ite animal food with all persons who perform 
much hard, out-door work, especially in our 
cold winters. One pound of fat is'equivalent, 
as a heat producer, to two and a half lbs. of 
starch or sugar, and so far as this is the object 
of eating animal food, good, firm pork is the 
cheapest meat that wc can use. But a farmer 
who uses his brain as well as his muscle needs 
something more than fat pork. For what sin is 
he who raises it denied the use of beef, or mut¬ 
ton, or poultry? In the summer, without an 
ice house, it is difficult to keep fresh meat. Not 
so in the winter. “But I can’t afford it.’ 
Nonsense. But if it were true, it would only 
prove that you do not work as hard or as intel¬ 
ligently as a farmer should. If you spend two 
or three hours of these short days talking at the 
corners, it is perhaps true that you cannot af¬ 
ford to eat beef. You do not deserve salt pork. 
Two hours’ work will pay for a good beefsteak, 
and that, properly cooked, will enable you to 
work harder, and to think as well as work,— 
and it is thoughtful work that tells. At any 
rate a farmer can have mutton when a pretty 
good sheep can be bought for $1.75, and the 
pelt worth more than half the money. When 
thousands of sheep are boiled down for the tal¬ 
low, and the rest fed to swine, the farmer who 
