THE CULTIVATOR. 
83 
MR. BGHENT'S BOAR RIP 
Mr. Tu-cker —With this you will receive a portrait 
of my Berkshire boar, “ Rip Van Winkle,” to whom 
was awarded the first prize for the best boar exhibited 
at the fair of the N. Y. State Agricultural Society, held 
at Syracuse in September last. I do not offer it with a 
view of saying much in favor of the breed, for they are 
now so widely disseminated throughout the country, and 
so well known, that all I could say would be of very little 
consequence; but it is with a wish to exhibit a correct 
portrait of a Berkshire hog, which has not been °-iven 
in any of the late volumes of the Cultivator. 
The above portrait was taken by Van Zandt soon af¬ 
ter he was exhibited at Syracuse, and I think you will 
recognize him at once, and say—'“he is a Berkshire 
every inch of him; and that Van Zandt, as well as Mr. 
Pease the engraver, have done him justice.” If there is 
any failure, it is in his legs, which I think he has made 
too small, and gives him rather a “leggy” appearance 
He has bone enough to sustain 6 or 700 weight- and it 
is the opinion of many that he may be made to attain 
the latter weight. His head, neck, and ears, « are to the 
life,” and his proportions are admirably good. 
By-the-bye, I will take the present opportunity of 
giving an extract from a letter I received in December 
last, from Mr. John Bonner, of White Plains, Ga., to 
iv. i 
W 
T.K-VANZf 
VAN WINKLE_(Fig. 52.) 
whom I sent several breeding sows last year; and no 
one, I assure you, has been more rigid or particular to 
procure the 'pure blood, and the best animals too. He is 
now rearing them for sale at $20 per pair—“first come, 
first served;” and applicants in that section may depend 
on procuring from him the real “simon pures .” 
He says—“At the fair, held at Sparta on the 6th inst. 
(Dec.,) Mr. A. E. W. Brown, who resides near Sparta, 
in Hancock county, exhibited “Black John,” a Berk¬ 
shire boar pig, four months and twelve days old, that 
took the first prize of $5 for boars; and he weighed that 
day 166 pounds, and was the produce of ‘ Black Rose,’ 
which you sent me, and which you said was got by the 
Shaker boar. Great Crosser,” &c. &c. 
The above mentioned pig, it will be observed, was 
bred by Mr. Bonner, and sold to Mr. Brown. 
One of the Berkshire sows I sent Mr. Bonner was 
stinted to Rip Van Winkle; and in a late letter he says 
“I have a remarkably fine boar pig, got by Rip Van 
Winkle out of the last sow you sent me, which promises 
to equal any hog I ever saw.” His pigs have been much 
admired wherever I have sent them; and many of his 
pigs may now be found in Georgia, as the sows I sold 
Capt. Hardwick of Sparta were all in pig to him. 
Three Hills Farm, April, 1842. C. N. Bement. 
■m, 
0 _ K S 
c| [A— 
2ZZS 
ZLZZE 
PLAN OF A CHEAP HOUSE—(Fig. 53.) 
Messrs. Gaylord & Tucker —Having sketched the 
plan of a small and convenient cottage, on a different 
plan from any that I have seen published in your paper, 
I now offer it for publication. Main body, 20 feet by 
26; posts, 144 feet. Wings, 10 by 16 feet; posts, 8£ 
feet. Lower rooms, 84 feet between joints. Wings to 
set back 1 foot, giving the carpenter a better chance to 
make a good finish, and giving a much better appear¬ 
ance to the building. 8 feet will be occupied for a ball 
and stairs in the center of the main body, leaving 6 feet 
each side of the hall, which, added to the roonf in the 
wings, will form two rooms 16 by 16 feet. The east 
room will be calculated for the kitchen, and the west for 
the parlor. On to the rear of the east wing will be ad¬ 
ded a linter of 7 feet, for pantry and passway out back; 
or if not wanted for a passway, will be found to make a 
very convenient clothes room to hang up such of the 
every day wearing apparel as is always wanted handy by. 
The rear of the main body will be divided into two 
bed rooms 8 by 9 feet, leaving a space of 4 feet between 
them for two clothes cupboards 4 by 44 feet, or it would 
make one large one 4 by 9 feet, best calculated to accom 
modate the bedroom opening from the kitchen. 
There will be a space under the stairs and in the rear 
of the hall for a cupboard, and considerable room to set 
pots of butter, sweetmeats, &c. &c., which will be kept 
from the light and heat. The main opening should be 
from the kitchen side, and two small half doors, if you 
please, from the parlor side to accommodate about set¬ 
ting the table in parlor, and prevent much passing 
round, and would be found very convenient in sickness, 
and through which the lady of the house might often 
speak with those in the kitchen. 
The space of one foot depth by the side of the win¬ 
dows in the main body, which will be left when the 
walls are made straight, may be occupied in the parlor 
for setting canes, umbrellas, hats, &c. in; and those in 
the kitchen—one to set your clock in, which should be 
finished off to fit it, and the other to hang up a loose 
coat, set in your shoes and boots on some small shelves, 
or whatever your taste might direct. Each space should 
be closed by a small door. 
The front door should be set back one foot or more, 
with side lights each side and over the top. 
Further described as follows: O, represents the oven 
—/ J, fireplaces— K, arch kettle— S, sink— m, cellar 
door—c c c, cupboards. 
The front stairs should rise about three-fourths of the 
way, and then turn west, to land in the upper hall, and 
give more room under them. I will add a sketch of the 
chamber rooms—giving merely the form—as any one 
can, after having the plan, lay out the rooms. 
LETTER FROM SCOTLAND. 
1842. 
I have not thought best to make any estimate of the 
cost; for in hardly any two places would a house be 
built for the same money, or any two persons would be 
found to build for the same price in a like place. 
Stillwater, 3 d mo. 1, 1842. B. Chase. 
County of Roxburgh, Scotland, Feb. 23, 
To the Editors of the Albany Cultivator: 
Sirs—I have recently received several numbers of 
your periodical, forwarded to me by order of a friend in 
the United States. I have read those with great satis¬ 
faction, and have from the perusal derived much useful 
information on American husbandry practices, and on 
rural affairs generally. Without intending to flatter, I 
candidly and concisely give my opinion of the Cultiva¬ 
tor. I think it ably conducted, and well supported by 
numerous intelligent contributors. 
I hope you will not deem me impertinent in offering 
a few remarks on some of those communications. You 
have the editor’s privilege in dealing with my essay as 
you may deem proper. 
I beg to introduce myself to your notice as an old 
fashioned farmer of some experience, far advanced in 
years, and retired from active life, and retaining fixed 
opinions on husbandry, deduced from my former exten¬ 
sive practice. But I begin to think those opinions may 
have been formed in error and prejudice, as I now 
hear of such wonderful, nay marvellous discoveries in 
modern theory in this country, I am quite lost in amaze¬ 
ment. 
When I was in practice, I was led to believe the dung 
yard was the farmer’s sheet anchor, and acted upon that 
principle; and firmly believed that straw was an essen¬ 
tial article in forming farm yard manure. But now I 
am told that straw is of little or no use for that purpose. 
Our modern chemical farmers have got their heads so 
stuffed full of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, 
phosphates, sulphates, nitrates, muriates, and other fan¬ 
cies, quite Greek to me, they ridicule and despise the 
old farmer’s sheet anchor. On your side of the Atlantic, 
you also appear to have prodigies; such as 
The Transmutation of Wheat into Cheat or 
Chess. —I do not know any plant by the name of cheat 
or chess. I will suppose it to be the plant here called 
darnel, Lolium temulentum, and treat of it accordingly- 
for even if a different plant, the remarks I am about to 
make on darnel will probably apply less or more to 
cheat or chess. 
Darnel is a pernicious plant, frequently seen among 
the wheat crops of slovenly farmers. It is a hardy plant, 
and retains its hold in the ground when wheat is thrown 
out in severe winters. It is also much more prolific 
than wheat; so much so, that if only a small portion of 
its seed is sown among wheat in the first instance, and 
no attention paid to weeding its plants out of the wheat 
crop, it will, by a repetition of sowing the produce, en¬ 
tirely supplant the wheat in a few years. Hence may 
have arisen the idea of transmutation. But I should as 
soon have imagined a horse could be transformed into a 
cow, as that one vegetable could be transmuted into 
another of a different genera, as in the case of wheat and 
darnel. The seed of darnel has some resemblance to 
wheat, but easily detected on close inspection. It is 
longer and thinner than wheat, and has a blue gray cast 
of color. It is particularly objected to by millers and 
bakers, as it injures the flour and is considered delete¬ 
rious. 
Attentive farmers are careful in the selection of wheat 
for seed. They reject samples in which they see either 
darnel, or cockle, Agrostemma Githago, another proli¬ 
fic weed which infests wheat fields. The seed of it is 
round and black. It is not considered deleterious, and 
millers and bakers do not so much object to it as dar¬ 
nel. Judicious farmers are careful in weeding both 
plants out of their growing wheat crops; and when thev 
winnow wheat, they do not throw the seeds of weeds 
into their dung yards. 
When an attentive farmer succeeds a sloven in the oc¬ 
cupation of a farm, he is careful in having the yard 
dung well turned and fermented, with a view to destroy¬ 
ing the seeds of weeds, before he applies the dung to 
his land in preparation for a succeeding wheat crop! 3 
Smut in Wheat. —Several contributors to the Culti¬ 
vator give very proper instruction for pickling and lim¬ 
ing seed wheat for the prevention of smut; but the 
dressing, however efficacious in itself, is not in many 
cases sufficient without further attention. It should be 
borne in mind that smut is a very infectious disease; and 
wheat seed, even after it is pickled, should not be spread 
out to dry upon a floor, upon which smutted wheat had 
previously been threshed. Neither should it be put into 
smut tainted sacks for the purpose of carrying- to the 
field. 
I have several times tried the experiment of inoculat¬ 
ing seed wheat with smut, after the seed had been 
pickled, limed, and dried for sowing, by means of tak¬ 
ing a sample of it in my hand and rubbing it with the 
powder of smut balls, then sowing it apart from the 
other. The result was,, in every instance, I found smut 
m the produce of the inoculated samples, and none in 
the produce of the bulk from which they were taken. 
Smut is also sometimes taken to the field in unfermented 
dung, made from the straw of smutted wheat of the for¬ 
mer year’s growth. 
Durham Short Horn Cattle. —Some of your cor¬ 
respondents affirm that cows of the improved Durham 
breed, here called “high bred, or well bred,” are great 
milkers. They are not so esteemed in this country. 
There, no doubt, are exceptions to the general rule- 
and it is fortunate for your breeders they have got some 
such. We consider the superior excellence of high bred 
Durhams to rest upon their fine shape, great size, early 
maturity, and aptitude to fatten. In those points, col¬ 
lectively, there are no other known breed equal to 
