THE CULTIVATOR 
189 
be applied advantageously to the making of maple sugar; though 
this is seldom done ; and the consequence is, that our maple sugar 
does not possess half the value it might possess. The purification 
of the juice, and the reducing it to sugar, are managed on like prin¬ 
ciples, though the processes of purifying vary. The sap of the ma¬ 
ple has only to be divested of its earthy impurities, which milk, eggs 
or blood serves ordinarily to effect. The juice of the beet contains 
coloring and other foreign matters, which it is necessary to get rid 
of; and this is done, and the liquor rendered limpid, by the appli¬ 
cation of lime and animal charcoal. These processes are particu¬ 
larly described in the report before us. 
Now beets can be grown, gathered and washed, by the laborers 
on a farm; they can be reduced by them to pulp in a grater cider 
mill; and the juice can also be expressed by them in a common ci¬ 
der press. The purifying process is easily learned, and practiced 
by the inmates of the family, as are the processes of boding down 
and sugaring off. The ordinary utensils of a family may suffice, 
though they are not to be preferred. A thermometer and areome¬ 
ter are useful in managing the processes with certainty and econo¬ 
my. They would be equally useful in the processes of making maple 
sugar, and the thermometer in the business of making butter and 
cheese. The cost of both will not exceed three dollars. One serves 
to determine temperature, the other specific gravity, and in five 
minutes the principles of either may be explained to a novice.— 
What then, we ask, is to hinder the farmer from raising the beet, 
and extracting from it, when his farm labors of the summer relax, 
or are completed, the sugar necessary for the consumption of his 
family, or for market, with as little expense, and as much certainty, 
as he produces it from his maple grove] 
The labor of fabricating maple sugar consists in tapping the trees, 
collecting the sap, and boiling it down to sugar. This is all out¬ 
door work, mostly performed in the woods, is fatigueing, and must 
be performed at an unpleasant season of the year, and ordinarily 
within a period of three or four weeks. The labor of making beet 
sugar, after the beets are prepared for rasping, consists in extract¬ 
ing the juice, and boiling it down to sugar. This may be all done 
under cover, and within a period of six months, though evidently 
the earlier it is done the better. The residuum of the beet sugar is 
valuable for cattle and sheep, and is nearly or quite sufficient to re¬ 
munerate for the out-door labor, or the culture of the beet. 
VEGETABLES FEED ON VEGETABLES. 
The importance of every species of vegetable and animal matter, 
as a manure for the soil, may be made apparent to any farmer, by 
a few plain considerations. 
Every kind of animal matter is derived originally from vegetables, 
and is convertible, by a natural process, again into vegetables. And 
every part of a vegetable is in like manner convertible into new 
plants. 
The elementary matters of a species of vegetable are always the 
same ; that is, a stool of wheat, or a stock of corn, grown this year, 
contains the same materials, and in about the same proportions, as 
they did last year. These materials, which constitute the wheat or 
the corn crop, are principally drawn from the soil; and consequent¬ 
ly the fertility of the soil is diminished, in proportion to the number 
and amount of the crops which are carried off. However rich, 
therefore, a soil may be naturally, it must be evident, that every crop 
serves to diminish its fertility—lhat it becomes poorer and poorer 
every year until it is no longer worth cultivating—unless fertility is 
kept up by restoring to it the vegetable matters, or a large portion 
of them, which have been carried off. We have all seen this prov¬ 
ed, in numerous instances, under the old system of farming. To 
prevent this decrease of fertility is one of the improvements of mo¬ 
dern husbandry; and it is prevented by manuring and alternating 
crops. Under the old system the rich lands of the west will dete¬ 
riorate till they are no better than those on the Atlantic border.— 
Under the system of manuring and alternating, the ordinary lands 
of Flanders have been made to maintain their natural fertility for 
hundreds of years, and those of China for thousands ot years ; and 
many of our worn out lands are now being in like manner renovated. 
Again. That field of corn contains precisely what is necessary 
to constitute another field of corn. If it is all left to rot on the 
ground, and permitted to decompose and mingle again witli the soil, 
it will make another like crop. But it is carried to the barn ; the 
grain is consumed, and the stocks and shucks are eaten by the farm 
stock, or littered in the yard. If, after serving thesa purposes of the 
cultivator, the residue of the crop—the dung, the stalks, &c.— 
were carefully returned and blended with the soil, even then the de¬ 
terioration of the field would be trifling. But this is seldom the case; 
these elements of fertility are suffered to waste, and if any, but a 
small portion of them are restored to the soil. The moment these 
stocks, or the cattle dung, begin to ferment, their decomposition, or 
chemical separation of their parts, commences—and this always 
takes place in the presence of heat, moisture and air—the gaseous 
matters, which they necessarily contained, and which are equally 
necessary to the coming crop, become disengaged and escape ; the 
rains saturate and leach the mass, and carry off other matters which 
formed a part of the old, and which are also necessary to the new 
crop; and if fermentation is permitted to exhaust its powers on the 
mass, so as to reduce it to the form of muck, one half that consti¬ 
tuted the old crop, and which the new crop will want, is irretrieva¬ 
bly lost; but if the dung and stocks of the old crop, blended and sa¬ 
turated as they will be in the cattle yard, are restored to the soil, 
before fermentation and rain have dissipated their riches, the gases 
and liquids disengaged by fermentation will be absorbed by the soil, 
and held in reserve for the next crop. Hence the propriety of ap¬ 
plying dung before it has rotted, or of applying the dung made in 
the winter to the spring crop; and hence the loss which ensues to 
the farmer from neglecting to convert to m inure all the animal and 
vegetable refuse of his farm and household. Plants are cannibals ; 
or in other words, they not only live upon plants, but they thrive best 
upon their own species. Nature is constantly changing dead into 
living vegetable matter, for the use of man, and it should be the bu¬ 
siness of the farmer to study her laws, and to co-operate in her be¬ 
neficent designs. 
Many of the objections to the use of long manure, in England, 
lose their force here. Our summers are much warmer than hers, 
and vegetable matters undergo a more speedy decomposition in our 
soil than in hers. The pertinent question is, does long manure de¬ 
compose, when buried in the soil, in time to serve the crop ] When 
put into the hill, or drill, we admit that it often does not; but when 
spread upon the whole surface, and properly buried, as we think it 
always should be, we believe it never fails to rot the first season, 
and in time for the corn crop. The late John Taylor, of Virginia, 
who was a scientific and extensively practical farmer, was in the ha¬ 
bit of burying with the plough, in his corn fields, the spray and 
branches of forest trees and shrubs, as means of inducing fertility, 
and he found benefit in the practice. Great Britain, besides, culti¬ 
vates no crop that is so fit a recipient for long manure as our Indian 
corn, which enters so largely into our system of husbandry as to 
absorb, with potatoes, all the long manure of spring,—and which is 
admirably fitted to convert this long manure into proper food for dry 
crops by the subsequent autumn. We repeat here what we have 
before remarked, that unfermented dung greatly accelerates the 
growth of straw and stalk—the stem, culm, or main body of an her¬ 
baceous plant—but that it is ill suited to the perfecting and matur¬ 
ing of the seed ;—that unfermented dung developes its greatest 
power during the heats of summer, when the seeds of the several 
grains are forming; that hence it is improper to apply it to these 
crops;—but that when applied to corn, or other autumnal ripening 
crops, it generates a beneficial warmth in the soil, and by the gases 
evolved, causes a vigorous growth of stocks, at a season most im¬ 
portant; that fermentation subsides before the formation of the seed, 
and that it then imparts to the crop the aliment best fitted to bring 
it to perfection. The doctrines of some British writers, who advo¬ 
cate the use of rotten dung, are not therefore applicable to our cli¬ 
mate and culture. 
CHINESE INDIGO AND MADDER. 
We have received from Gen. Tallmadge some seeds of the plant, 
noticed in a former number, as also several other varieties of 
seed, brought from Italy and from Russia, for which we tender to 
the General our thanks. Among the seeds are those of the Cadiz 
muskmelon, indentical with the winter melon we lately spoke of, 
equal in flavor to our citron melon, but larger, and keeping late in 
winter. We say this from experience, as we are to day, January 3d, 
having one served to our dessert. This, with the other fruits of 
Spain & and Portugal, are regularly supplied in the London market by 
steam-boats. Why, asks the General, do not our merchants supply 
New-York with ajl the ripe fruits of the tropics, by a like convey¬ 
ance 1 We have some doubt if the Cadiz melon will attain to ma¬ 
turity in this latitude, but we have none that it would do well in 
