128 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
EXPERIMENTS WITH PLAISTER OF PARIS. 
Jesse Buel, esq.—Dear Sir —I now, in conformity with my pro- 
mise, send you the result of the various experiments which 1 have 
made with Plaister of Paris. Early in the spring I ordered 50 bar¬ 
rels from Oswego, but owing to some unknown cause, they did not 
reach me till the middle of May. . I immediately had six barrels 
sown on 22 acres of clover and timothy, in a field which had not 
been half seeded by my predecessor; the seed was sown in the pre¬ 
ceding spring on winter wheat—in less than a fortnight the effect 
was evident, and I cut over two tons an acre where I am certain I 
should not, without the plaister, have cut 15 cwt. The field being 
large and rather undulating, the sower missed his line in several 
spots, and on these there was scarcely grass enough to stand the 
6cythe. The field had been cleared more than 20 years, and hardly 
cropped without ever having been manured—previ< us wheat crop 
not over 18 bushels per acre after summer fallow—soil a deep loam, 
rather light than heavy. Having a field of fifteen acres of peas 
sown after a poor crop of wheat, which had been much winter kill¬ 
ed ; on the 20th of May, when the plants were just appearing, I or¬ 
dered one barrel of plaister to be sown on about four acres thereof, 
merely to try the effect, which was so great that in less than a 
month it appeared to have increased the crop at least three-fold.— 
Vexed at having plaistered so small a part, when I beheld the re¬ 
sult, without expecting to remedy my error in any considerable de¬ 
gree, as the peas were all now more than a foot high, and those 
which had been plaistered much higher, I ordered my head man, an 
excellent seedsman, to sow another barrel at the rate of half a bush¬ 
el per acre ; in less than three weeks these last manured were fully 
equal to the others, wliile the five acres unplaistered were so infe¬ 
rior that they might be distinguished two miles off, though these 
were more than an average crop. The plaistered peas were so lux¬ 
uriant that I feared they would neither ripen nor pod well, but they 
are now nearly all cut, and I find my fears were groundless. An 
experienced farmer, who for more than 30 years successfully tilled a 
very extensive farm in the East Lothians of Scotland, walked over 
the field with me the day before yesterday, and he declared that he 
never had seen a finer or more productive crop in any country; in¬ 
deed the ground could scarcely contain more plants, or the plants 
more pods; the tops, however, of the plaistered peas continued to 
grow and blossom till they were cut, and will make excellent fod¬ 
der, but the peas were quite ripe nearer the bottom. In a field 
which 1 ad been lightly seeded with timothy in 1834, and which last 
year was scarcely worth mowing, I sowed on three acres of the 
shallowest and worst part, a barrel of plaister; these produced 
twice as much hay as all the rest of the field (7 acres,) and the mow¬ 
ers said I lost eight tons of hay by not plaistering the whole. I 
also sowed half a bushel on an acre of a field which had been left 
unseeded, and produced nothing but natural red top, bent and blue 
grass ; a thick and luxuriant coat of white clover in a short time 
marked the spot, which was eaten bare by my cattle, and had a very 
singular appearance in the midst of the coarse grasses which they 
left untouched. I also found plaister beneficial, though in a less 
degree, to spring wheat. The soil of the three last mentioned fields 
is a deep sandy loam, containing a good many lime stones. In my gar¬ 
den my experiments were attended with very different results; it 
contains exactly one acre of deep rich vegetable mould, and was 
never submitted to spade or plough till last September, when it 
was well manured with long dung, and trench ploughed ; last spring 
it was well dragged and cross ploughed, and afterwards well work¬ 
ed with the cultivator, and the part intended for small seeds dug 
with the spade ; a part having been planted with asparagus, rhu¬ 
barb and seakale early in last November. I tried plaister here on 
peas, rhubarb, seakale, onions, carrots, parsnips, turnips, French 
beans, cellery, melons and potatoes, and on none of these, except 
the beans, which were evidently, and the potatoes, which were 
greatly benefitted, did it produce any beneficial effects—on the me¬ 
lons it positively operated as a poison, destroying every plant sub¬ 
mitted to its influence. Hence it seems that on oyer rich or highly 
manured lands, plaister is of little or no benefit, but that its good ef¬ 
fects on dry, light soils are most extraordinary, I am thoroughly 
convinced. I must add that I last week saw a field of oats, the soil 
of which was a pure running sand, that could not, without such as¬ 
sistance as it received, have produced a return of the seed—sown 
after peas, and yet on six acres thereof, where the peas had been 
plaistered , the crop is certainly not less than sixty bushels to the 
acre, while on the rest of the field it is not worth cutting. 
I hope sir, many of your readers will be induced by what I hav« 
said, (and I am sure, though I write anonymously, for reasons be¬ 
fore stated, that you who know me will vouch for my credibility,) 1 |tc 
use this cheap but'most valuable manure, and their success, o 
which I am confident, will highly gratify a sincere well wisher to the 
agricultural enterprize of your countrymen, and a warm admirer o 
your own praiseworthy exertions in so good a cause. 
Upper Canada, September 5th, 1836. COLONUS. 
WILSON’S MOWING AND GRAIN CUTTING MACHINE. 
Fig. 43. 
Among the thousands of labor saving inventions, which form one 
of the most prominent features of the present age, it is natural to 
expect that many splendid and plausible plans may prove abortive, 
and deceive the inventors, and often the public; and therefore, few 
men, if any, are capable of deciding with certainty on the merits 
of an invention, until experience shall sanction the decision. 
A machine has been recently exhibited in this city and its vici¬ 
nity, by the inventor, Capt. Alexander M. Wilson, of Rhinebeck, for 
mowing grass and cutting grain. I will predicate my remarks on 
what I saw, and leave time and experience to decide on its merits. 
The machine consists of a carriage on two wheels, propelled by 
one or two horses, oxen or other beasts of burden, travelling in the 
rear and pushing it forward. In the front, at ihe bottom, is a hori¬ 
zontal wheel upon an upright shaft, which shaft and wheel receive 
a rotary motion, communicated by gear from the mam axle, which 
revolves with its wheels, as the machine goes forward. The diame¬ 
ter of this horizontal wheel, with the addition of the knives pro¬ 
jecting from its edge, measures the width of the swathe, which is 
cut witli the knives as the wheel goes forward, revolving rapidly 
and lying close to the ground. The apparatus which sustains ihe 
cutting wheel is so constructed as to accommodate its height to any 
inequalities in the ground, and to give it any inclination required. 
The knives are sharpened by their own operation, without stop¬ 
ping the machine. There is also attached to the upper side of the 
cutting wheel a rim which gathers the grass as it is cut, and lays it 
in a swath more regularly that it can be laid by the sythe. 
I saw it in operation, propelled by two horses, and cutting a 
swath about six feet wide, as fast as the horses could walk ; and 
though the ground was very uneven, and the grass somewhat dry 
and in bad order, it performed the work as well as it could be done 
by hand. 
I know not what objections experience may raise against it, but 
I would venture to say, if this most tedious and yet most important 
labor of the husbandman, is ever to be successfully performed by 
machinery, I think this machine more likely to effect it than any 
other plan I have seen. It would be absurd to expect this or any 
other mowing machine, to operate on new and rough land, among 
stones and stumps—but our country affords numerous large tracts 
of meadow with fine smooth bottom, and the proportion is rapidly 
increasing; and in the great western prairies, such a machine, 
cannot fail to be one of the most useful improvements of the 
age. I would therefore advise every agriculturist, who has smooth 
meadows, or which can be made smooth, particularly those at the 
far west, to see this machine, and endeavor to promote its intro¬ 
duction, so far at least as to give it a fair trial. 
S. BLYDENBURGH. 
Relerence made to the patentee. Rhinebeck, Dutchess co., or to 
George Hanford, No. 409 South Market-street, Albany. 
