156 
THE CULTIVATOR 
ed in this country. “ Fessenden’s Complete Farmer,” 
“ Buel’s Farmers’ Companion,” “ American Husband¬ 
ry,” and the “ Practical Farmer,” are the best known. 
Periodicals have, as yet, been more depended upon for 
the circulation of agricultural information than costlier 
works, and these are to be found in abundance. 
Egyptian Barley and Skinless Oats. 
One of our subscribers at Greenville, C. H.(S. C.) in 
a late letter, says — 
“ I have raised during two seasons, the Egyptian barley, 
(Hordeum coeleste,) which I think a very fine grain and well 
adapted to our latitude, 34° 45', but it requires rich, dry, 
light soil and good tillage. Skinless oats, I think begin to de¬ 
generate ; the seed was this year very small, but the straw 
strong and high. Probably the land was too rich.” 
The Crops in New-Jersey. 
We make the following extract from a letter from D. 
L. Dodge, Esq. dated Cedar Brook, Bloomfield, (N. J.) 
Sept. 2 : 
“ Through the whole season up to the present time, we have 
had a superabundance of rain, except a few weeks in July, so 
much as to cause delay in getting in the spring crops. We 
have had a large crop of hay, but more foul weeds inter¬ 
spersed than common. Winter wheat, generally a fair crop 
and quality. Siberian spring wheat, was promising about the 
last of June, but afterwards nearly destroyed by blight. Rye 
promised early a large yield, but did not fill well; perhaps 
two-thirds of a crop will be realized. Oats that indicated a 
heavy crop, were struck with rust while in the blossom, and will 
probably be light in quantity and quality. Corn, buckwheat, 
potatoes and roots now promise more than an average yield. 
Some of our meadows, notwithstanding they have been fed, 
would now yield a tolerable crop of rowen if again mowed. 
From inquiries, I am led to believe that the abundance of rain 
with which we have been favored, has not extended far to the 
west or north of us, and that hay and some other crops, ex¬ 
cept in this vicinity, will be very light.” 
Foot Rot in Sheep. 
“ J. H. M.” of Delaware county, says : 
“1 placed a flock of about 160 sheep, as fine as the country 
could produce, upon a farm near by, and vigorous and healthy, 
and quite fleshy for the season, (April last.) The sheep having 
come into my possession the fall before, I cannot account for 
their previous treatment. A few weeks since we were surprised 
to find more than half suffering severely with the Hoof or Foot 
Rot, and unless some cure be provided, the whole will be ruined. 
Will you be so good as to insert the best intelligence in your 
possession, on the causes and remedy of this dreadful malady?” 
We regret that the inquiry of J. H. M. did not reach 
us in season for our last number, as in diseases of that 
nature, promptness in cure is very necessary. We shall 
however, reply to his queries and first as to the cause. 
The excellent treatise on sheep by Mr. Youatt, says: 
“ This disease (the foot rot) is the consequence of soft and 
marshy pasture. The mountain or the down sheep—the sheep 
in whose walk there is no poachy ground, if he is not actually 
exposed to infection by means of the virus, knows nothing at 
all about it; it is in the yielding soil of the low country that 
all the mischief is done. * * Sheep that are brought from 
upland to lowland or but soft meadows or pastures are more 
particularly subject to it.” 
Blacklock, in his valuable work on sheep, says : 
“ The finest and richest old pastures and lawns are particu¬ 
larly subject to this disease ; soft, marshy, and luxuriant mea¬ 
dows are equally so; and it is sometimes found in light, soft 
or sandy districts. In the first of these it is perhaps most pre¬ 
valent in a moist season, and in the latter in a dry one ; in 
short, it exists to a greater or less extent in every situatio’n 
■which has a tendency to increase the growth of the hoofs, with¬ 
out wearing them away, and more especially when they are 
kept soft by moisture. * * * Another variety of foot rot is 
produced by the friction of long grass between the hoofs, but is 
mostly confined to hill sheep, when first pastured on low laud 
districts. The rubbing of the grass frets the skin in the cleft of 
the hoof, the gland in that situation swells, becomes enlarged, 
suppurates, and in no long time the animal unable to stand on, 
its feet, is compelled to rest upon its knees. This kind of dis¬ 
ease is more easily remedied than the former, and does not 
cause so much suffering to the sheep.” 
As to the cure of Foot R.oot, the first thing is to re¬ 
move the sheep to clean dry pastures, and where the 
above causes of diseases will not act; all the diseased 
sheep are to he separated from the healthy ones, as it 
is considered infectious, and unless this precaution is 
taken, usually spreads with great rapidity. Black- 
lock says : 
“When foot rot has fairly commenced, pare the hoof from 
the affected part, and trim away any ragged portions, wash the 
foot with soap and water, and place the animal in a situation 
where as few irritating things as possible will be in the way of 
the tender surface, and give a purgative. If not properly at¬ 
tended to, the suppuration soon terminates in mortification. 
Cleanliness, in every stage and variety of the foot rot is of the 
first importance. Many corrosive preparations are recom¬ 
mended for the cure of this disease, but I have decided objec¬ 
tions to one and all of them. When the foot is clean, endeavor 
to keep it so by frequent applications of soap and water, and if 
ulcers or fungous flesh appears, treat the foot with the follow¬ 
ing preparation:—wash the foot once or twice a day with a 
solution of sulphate of copper, (made by dissolving two or 
three drams of blue vitriol in an English pint of soft water,) 
and carefully covered over with a pledget of fine tow, spread 
with lard or any simple ointment, by which means, conjoined 
with cleanliness, a cure will usually be accomplished.” 
Youatt says, 
“ The first and fundamental thing is to cut away every por¬ 
tion of horn that is in the slightest degree separated from the 
parts beneath it. A small sharp pointed curve knife, or a small 
drawing knife will be the best instrument to effect this.” 
The foot is then to be thoroughly cleaned, unhealthy 
granulations cut down with scissors or a knife, and then 
the foot is to be washed in a solution of chloride of 
lime in the proportion of one pound of the chloride to 
a gallon of water. This will remove the foetor, and 
check the tendency to sloughing and mortification. The 
muriate or butter of antimony may then, by means ol a 
little stick and tow, be applied to every denuded part, 
lightly where the surface has a healthy appearance and 
more severely where fungous granulations have been 
cut off. So far as these foot cases are concerned, this 
supersedes all other caustic and other applications. If 
a considerable portion of the horn of the foot, particu¬ 
larly the sole is removed, the foot may be bound up 
with tow secured by tape, and the sheep placed in dry 
straw, or if turned to the field always to one very dry. 
Close attention, and frequent examinations are required, 
and if kept clean and dry, a cure will be usually effected. 
Such, in substance are the directions of Mr. Youatt. 
In the same work will be found numerous instances 
where the disease proved infectious, and hence with 
justness the necessity and propriety of keeping the dis¬ 
eased from the sound sheep is inferred. 
Green Corn Fodder for Horses. 
“ What is your opinion of Indian corn in its green state, cut 
up with the stalk and used as fodder or food for horses ? do you 
think it nutritious? Some here recommend it highly; others 
say horses will thrive on it. I think it acts too freely on the 
bowels. 1 should like to see some extended remarks by some 
of your correspondents on the best manner of treating work 
and traveling horses. Elizabethtown, N. C. W. B.” 
All plants which abound in juices, if fed to animals 
without the mixture of other and dryer food, is apt to 
produce a loosening effect on the bowels. This is the 
case with beets, carrots, turneps, potatoes, &c. and 
hence it is found necessary where horses or cattle are 
fed on these, to give with them a quantity of dry hay. 
Very green corn would require such an addition, if used 
extensively for horses, but with this no injury could 
ensue. There can he no doubt as to the nutritive quali¬ 
ties of corn fodder. But to possess this quality in the 
greatest extent, the juices should be fully elaborated, 
as they contain the most saccharine matter, which 
seems to be essential to the full value of the plant. 
This time is when the corn is pretty generally glazed, 
and if cut up at this period, cut in a chaff machine and 
fed at once, or dried and stored for winter fodder and 
then cut for use, the stalks of corn will be found most 
nutritious and valuable. Where corn meal is to be fed 
to animals, the cob should always be ground with the 
grain, and there are few kinds of food on which ani¬ 
mals will thrive faster, than the stalks and leaves made 
into chaff', and mixed with corn and cob meal. 
Will some of our correspondents, qualified by their 
acquaintance with that noble animal, the horse, reply to 
the last part of our correspondent’s inquiry? 
“Book Farming, Farming Books, and Farming 
in General,” 
Under this title, a writer who signs himself Timo¬ 
thy Oldschool, has in a late number of the Alabama 
Republican Pilot, in a happy style of caustic humor, 
shown up at considerable length the absurdity of those 
who object to the manifest improvement of agriculture 
going on, because owing to books or agricultural pa¬ 
pers, and hence condemned as hook farming. We can 
make room for this extract only : 
“ These Book Farmers brag about their immense crops, their 
splendid cattle, their daily improvements, and so on. These 
are all such vain boastings, that we would not be fools enough 
to believe them if we were witness to them ourselves. But if 
what they say about improved stocks being so superior to the 
common ones is true, why not improve them ourselves ? What 
if it does take 50 or 100 years to make them equal to the im¬ 
ported breeds ? Shall we be so unpatriotic as to be dependent 
on foreigners for things we can in time raise ourselves ? We 
should be completely free of all foreign influence. Very true, 
some may say that by availing ourselves of their labors it will 
enable us to be independent of them fifty or a hundred years 
earlier than we otherwise would be : yet still we ought to im¬ 
prove on our own breeds, and be independent of all others.” 
“ The butcher houses of London say that within the last fifty 
years the average weight of animals brought to that market 
has increased one-third ; and those of Boston assert that with¬ 
in the last twelve years, the average increase of weight in ani¬ 
mals slaughtered there, has been from ten to twelve per cent. 
This, however, is like all other assertions of the Book farmers; 
if we admit it, we acknowledge the possibility that book farm¬ 
ing is doing some good; the only way, therefore, is to assert 
that this alleged increase of weight is all a fabrication.” 
Manufacture of Manures. 
Our correspondent “G. W.” of Richmond, will per¬ 
ceive that his former inquiries have been replied to in 
the September number of the Cultivator. We now 
proceed to his present ones. He says : 
“ I find that 20 gallons of urine is sufficient to saturate 500 
lbs. of plaster; I wish to know whether this quantity of plaster 
will not take up more salts than will be afforded by the 20 gal¬ 
lons. If so, how much more ? 
“ By adding a larger quantity of urine and stirring the whole 
together, will the plaster take up the salts, &c. of the fluid. If 
so, will the residue be water which I may draw off or evapo¬ 
rate ? It is a great object with me to give the plaster the strong¬ 
est possible preparation in order to save transportation. 
“ What quantity of any one of these agents (gypsum, chloride 
of Calcium, sulphuric or muriatic acid, and super-phosphate 
of lime (as quoted from Liebig) will suffice to fix the ammonia 
of 30 gallons of putrid urine ? 
“ I think I am making successfully the 1 Alkaline vegetative 
Powder’ of Madame Vebert Duboul, but I wish to ask, does the 
lime used in the preparation prevent the escape of the am¬ 
monia ?” 
Our limited chemical knowledge does not enable us to 
answer the inquiries of our correspondent satisfactori¬ 
ly, and as they are important, we copy them in the 
hope they will receive attention of some of our practi¬ 
cal chemists. The preparation of such manures is of 
great consequence to the farmer, and the best methods, 
those which ensure the greatest combination of ferti¬ 
lizing ingredients, should he adopted. There can be 
little doubt, we think, that 500 lbs. of plaster will com¬ 
bine with and retain for the use of the soil or plants, 
the salts of more than twenty gallons of urine. This 
could easily be tested by experiment. If a quantity of 
the mass once saturated with urine be dried at a mode¬ 
rate temperate, and then again wet with the putrid 
urine and stirred up fully, permitted no escape of am¬ 
monia, (a fact known at once by the penetrating odor 
of that substance,) it would be certain that the lushest 
point of combination or saturation had not been reach¬ 
ed. In making an experiment with larger quantities 
of urine as suggested in the second query, evaporating 
the urine would be preferable to drawing it off, as in the 
latter case some of the uncombined salts would he lost, 
which would be left in the process of evaporation. 
We have no means of accurately determining the 
points alluded to in G. W.’s last queries. Chaptal, 
Davy, and Liebig simply assert the fact that the sub¬ 
stances named neutralize the ammonia of animal mat¬ 
ter, urine, &c. but say nothing as to quantities. The 
odor emitted is probably the surest test of the neutra¬ 
lization or absorption of the ammonia, as this sub¬ 
stance is one which cannot pass freely into the atmos¬ 
phere without detection. The whole science of the 
manufacture of manures is yet in its infancy, new and 
useful discoveries are almost daily making, and while 
science must direct and lead in such inquiries, much is 
depending on carefully conducted experiments in test¬ 
ing the utility of such discoveries. In this course, we 
trust our correspondent will persevere, carefully noting 
and recording his various operations and their results. 
Targe Calf. 
Mr. Samuel W. Bartlett, of East Windsor, (Ct.) 
has a thorough bred Durham Short Horn bull calf, 
that when four months and eighteen days old, weighed 
525 pounds, having gained 345 pounds in the last one 
hundred and nine days, or a fraction over three pounds 
per day. — 
Culture of Ilemp. 
We shall he gratified to receive an answer to the fol¬ 
lowing inquiries, made by “ A Subscriber,” at Griggs- 
ville, Illinois, from some of our readers in Kentucky : 
“What kind of a soil is best for hemp—the best time to plant, 
and how done—how much seed to an acre—when is it fit to cut 
--what process does it have to go through from the time that it 
is fit to cut, to get it ready for market—and how much does it 
produce to the acre ?” 
More Large Pigs. 
We make the following extract from a letter from Mr. 
Samuel Denison, of Floyd, Oneida county. N. Y., who 
says he has been for Twenty years making efforts to im¬ 
prove his breed of swine : 
“I have a sow crossed with the Leicestershire and our com¬ 
mon improved breed of white hoits, three years old last spring, 
long bodied, short thin haired, fine in bone, and easy to keep; 
her first litter of pigs came the last of April, and were wintered 
oveT, and killed the next autumn, and weighed from 535 to al¬ 
most 400; her next spring’s litter, from a Berkshire boar, came 
the 4th of March; I fatted and killed six, between Christmas 
and New Years, a few days short of ten months old ; their ave¬ 
rage weight, dressed, 258 pounds and some ounces; the heaviest 
288 pounds. The pigs I am going to give you the weight of, or 
a part of them, came the 1st March last, seven in number, sired 
by our improved common breed white boar; one of the number 
I keep for a boar; the other six I feed, not however, with the 
expectation of competing with Dr. Martin. You will see by my 
manner of feeding, that I keep a dairy, and make butter; my 
pigs I fed with buttermilk and sour milk from six weeks old, the 
time I took them off to wean, until that began to fail, the latter 
part of July; as the milk began to fail, I added to it corn, soak¬ 
ed or boiled in water, and nothing more nor less. Two of the 
pigs I weighed at six months old—one weighed 245 pounds, the 
other 231 pounds ; the other five not much lighter. The boar is 
for sale, and I shall have pigs to sell in the spring.” 
The following is from “ J. W.” Goshen, Columbiana 
county, Ohio : 
“Henry Hinchman, a near ueighbor of mine, has an uncom¬ 
mon fine sow, improved from the common stock of hogs, and 
has raised several filters of pigs from her and a full blooded 
Berkshire boar, for which he has been getting great prices, one 
of which he sold to Thomas Delzel that was pigged the 2oth of 
3rd month, 1840; at two months old it weighed 54 pounds: at 
three months weighed 112 pounds, and at six months weighed 
262 pounds ; and it is supposed that at this time he would weigh 
near 700. I am not possessed with a thorough knowledge of the 
manner of feeding, though I believe he was principally fed on 
corn and the slops of the house, with some bran or meal.” 
Berkshire Pigs. 
Mr. Wm. Anderson, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, thinks 
Dr. Martin’s “Bernice,” whose portrait was published 
in the August No., was indebted to the Berkshire cross 
for most of her excellence, as she possesses the charac- 
teristics of that breed in a high degree. Mr. A. also 
thinks there is a great difference in the Berkshires, and 
that those with “long nose and nearly straight face, 
long neck, a middling good shoulder, long back, light 
ham,” &,c. should be avoided, while those only should 
be selected, which “ have short fine heads, dishing faces, 
short necks, deep thick shoulders, broad hacks, heavy 
hams, extending down to hock joint, and broad tvhen 
viewed from behind, long round barrels, and wide in the 
chest.” These, he says, “ will keep fat on grass, and 
will make more pork for the amount of food consumed 
than any other breed in the United States.” Mr. A. 
has now on hand six litters of full blood pigs, from 
large and choice sows, and from a boar “ five feet ten 
inches long from end of nose to root of tail, girth behind 
the shoulders five feet three inches, and weighing over 
550 pounds, in grass fed order,” which he will be glad 
to dispose of for $20 per pair. 
Early Potatoes. —The editor of the New Haven Farm. Ga¬ 
zette received on the 6th of July a mess of new potatoes from 
Mr. J. Walton. They are called the egg potato, and were brought 
from England by Mr. W. They are not great bearers, but are 
early matured. The Gazette says—“the sample brought to us 
were from seed planted the 20th of March; they are perfectly 
ripe, and on being cooked, were as mealy as the best Vermont f 
blues we ever saw.” 
